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NOTES 



OF 



Foreign Travel 



J.^H. BATES 



PRINTED FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION. 



NEW YORK: 

BURR PRINTING HOUSE, 

1891. 



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Copyright, 1891, 
Bv J. H. BATES. 



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& 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 



WASHINGTON 



NOTES OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 



May r, 1S89. — At last, after so many years, I am about to 
I'ealize the dream of my life — a visit to lands beyond the 
sea ; and this cool, bright morning, at half-past six, finds me 
with wife, daughter Betty and niece Mary on board the huge 
steamer "City of New York," which at the above hour slowly 
swings from her moorings into the Hudson at Pier 43, and 
carefully feels her way down the river and harbor, through 
the Narrows, into the broad Atlantic. 

We leave the city bedecked as never before for the wonder- 
ful three days' pageant of the Centennial Celebration of 
Washington's Inauguration as President of thirteen United 
States, now grown to forty-four, with a population increased 
twentyfold ! 

The " City of New York," of the Inman Line, now entering 
on her seventh passage, and her twin sister, the " City of 
Paris," are the largest steamships now afloat, each being 580 
feet long and of 10,000 tons burden. We have state-room No. 
5 on the promenade-deck. The first-class passengers number 
three hundred and sixty-four. We found on the tables in the 
dining-room many presents of flowers, fruits, wines and deli- 
cacies, which the kind thoughts of the donors suggested might 
relieve the tedium or illness of travel by sea. I think tokens 
of kindly remembrance are more grateful on the occasions 
when we are about to absent ourselves from home than at any 
other time. Specially touching to me were the fine presents 
from the people in my employ, with the kind words accom- 
panying put into the form of verse and bearing an assurance 
that each and all would do the best possible in my behalf 
while absent, with kind wishes so heartily expressed that I 
must think them sincere. 



4 On Our Way. 

The ocean is as fully at rest to-day, I should think, as it ever 
becomes, "dark heaving" only, with the gentlest possible 
pulsation of its mighty heart. 

The North German Lloyd steamer "Trave" left her dock 
when we did, and although we passed her in the harbor, she 
has kept in sight, bearing away on a more northerly course, 
until now, four o'clock p. m., she shows faintly with a veiling 
banner of smoke far on our larboard, and many miles behind. 

I lost the seats I had engaged at table a week ago, because 
when the steward asked me for what trip I wanted them, I 
answered the next, and found, when claiming them, that the 
"next" trip meant the second time the steamer sails from New 
York, as the "trip" dates from Liverpool. However, good 
seats were assigned us at a table with Dr. Willoughby Walling 
and his family of wife and two youthful sons. Dr. Walling is 
returning to Edinburgh, where he was consul under President 
Cleveland, and is not likely to be disturbed by the change in 
the Administration, as he is a friend of President Harrison, 
and from Indianapolis. 

May 2. — The sea continues tranquil, but since noon yester- 
day the sky has been obscured by dull, chilly clouds, with 
occasional spatters of rain. The warmest wraps are needed 
on deck to protect from the raw air, and the entire aspect of 
sky and water is dreary. The face of the deep, away to the 
horizon's edge, takes on the ashen hue of the sky, and the 
poet's 

" Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste" 

is fully appropriate. 

At noon we had made four hundred and eighty-four miles 
from Sandy Hook, or four hundred and thirty-four miles in 
twenty-four hours. I saw on the deck a pert English sparrow 
hopping tamely about. One of the sailors stated that these 
friendly little creatures often go out with the steamers far to 
sea, sometimes making the entire passage. It grew more and 
more chilly in the afternoon, and night came on with a heavy 
rain, driving everybody under cover of the state-rooms and 
rather insufficient public sitting-rooms. The rain continued 
all night. 

May 3. — At six o'clock in the morning the deafening fog. 
horn gave token that we were in the remote neighborhood of 



Some Distinguished Passengers. 5 

the Banks of Newfoundland. We have been in fog all day, 
with some short intervals of open weather, and every half 
minute the steam-horn screeched terribly enough to wake the 
Seven Sleepers. The fog is not dense enough at any time to 
obscure the view within a quarter of a mile of the steamer, 
nothing at all like what often settles on the East River be- 
tween New York and Brooklyn. We made four hundred and 
twenty miles yesterday. 

I could not find my sparrow anywhere on deck this morning, 
and was told that quite likely, as often happens, he had flown 
too far from the steamer, and could not get back. There is 
only a moderate swell of the ocean, imparting no more than a 
slight motion to the huge steamer. After comparatively 
clearing away, the fog will gather with wonderful celerity, and 
the dismal fog-horn sounded all night, much to our disturbance, 
as our rooms are on the promenade-deck, with port-holes open, 
for it has come off warm. The sea roughened toward night, 
and the crests of the swells show white with foam all about. 
Still, the only motion of the steamer is a slow roll, just enough 
to affect a few of the most sensitive passengers. 

May 4. — Warm, with very little sea, and the fog quite gone. 
The run was four hundred and thirty-three miles, so that, 
under the most favorable circumstances, the steamer is not 
doing as well as was expected. The machinery is said not to 
be working well at all points. Now, at 4 p.m., the sun is out 
almost for the first time since the first half day, and the sky is 
not all clear from clouds. 

I have just seen my little sparrow, or another equally at 
home, on deck. Life on board is the laziest imaginable. We 
stroll about or lounge, reading, in the steamer chairs ; eat with 
relish not only the three regular meals at table, but of the many 
dishes frequently brought about by the cabin-boys. We have 
on board Senators Sherman and Cameron, with their families ; 
John C. New, Consul-General to London ; Thomas, Minister 
to Sweden, where he married a pretty Norwegian girl, whom 
he has had home to Portland, Me., on a visit, and is now on his 
way back ; Henry Abbey, the popular theatrical manager, with 
his family, and a miscellaneous company of the sort one usually 
meets in travel, including a due proportion of those half-out- 
landish men and women in looks, dress, and manner, whom one 
never does see except away from home, but who must needs 



6 Life on Board. 

abide somewhere when on land. We are an epitome of the 
great world of social existence, twelve hundred miles at sesi, in 
the midst of a loneliness so utter that one feels easily that we 
alone are left of the human race. Pools on the daily run of 
the steamer are sold in the smoking-room by a Hebrew 
auctioneer with a half-horsey look, and the interest taken in 
them is surprising. The weather continues heavy, with more 
or less rain, a mild sea and light fogs. 

May 5, Sunday. — No change during the night except increas- 
ingly warm, so that wraps are uncomfortable. Divine service 
in the dining-room at lo a.m., Captain Lewis reading the 
prayers and a Boston musical club singing. The noble 
English service had a peculiar solemnity in mid-ocean, where 
God's power and man's helplessness are so feelingly contrasted. 
The run was only three hundred and ninety-two miles, a fall- 
ing off caused by some injury to one of the propelling screws, 
disabling it yesterday for some four hours, during which only 
half speed was made. The outline of a steamer is dimly seen 
at 3 p. M. on the western horizon, and a little later a full-rigged 
ship showing spectrally through the mist. The weather is 
warm, with low clouds all about, giving down frequent drizzles 
of rain. After dark we watched from the stern the far-stream- 
ing line of phosphorescent light in our wake. 

May 6. — Raining hard in the morning, but about noon the 
sky cleared, the wind freshened and grew cool, the sea changed 
its dull hue to the dark blue one associates with it, and heaves 
in foam-crested swells. A small company of white gulls is 
noticed hovering with swift wing not far away, although we 
must be not less than six hundred miles from any land. The 
run was four hundred and twenty-nine miles. 

In the evening a concert took place in the dining-saloon, 
Senator Sherman presiding. The entertainment would have 
been thought good anywhere, and yielded something over four 
hundred dollars. 

May 7. — All things nearly the same as yesterday. The run 
was four hundred and thirty-one miles. In the evening, at a 
meeting over which Senator Sherman presided, a resolution 
exceedingly complimentary to the steamer. Captain Lewis and 
all in any way connected with her, was passed. This sort of 
thing always gets itself managed somehow, and may mean 
much or little, or nothing at all. 



At Queenstoiun. 7 

May 8. — At half-past one this morning wakened by the fizz 
of a rocket, and looking out, saw the famous Fastnet Light 
gleaming through the thin mist like a huge red star, and when 
I went on deck at four o'clock the wind was fresh, the atmos- 
phere transparent, the blue waves tossing manes of foam, 
tiocks of gulls swirling wildly all about, just such a sea as one 
imagines guarding the British Isles, and right at hand on our 
left the precipitous shore of Ireland, its dark rocks forever 
chafed by the encroaching sea. Above the cliffs all was green 
and fair and tender in the morning light of May, the east 
luminous, a church-tower outlined against it from the long 
crest of a slope, coming down to the steep shore. The first 
view of the Emerald Isle is enchanting. 

At five we were off the entrance to Queenstown Harbor, and 
slowed up for a perky little tender called the " Flying 
Squirrel," which came bobbing out to fetch away the Queens- 
town passengers and mails. But the sea was decided to be 
too rough, and the steamer worked into the harbor and came 
to anchor while the transfer took place. Our luggage came 
ashore with us at the Customs Wharf, where the examination 
was of the slightest. The only articles dutiable are spirits, 
tobacco, fire-arms, and dynamite. We took rooms and break- 
fasted at the Queen's Hotel, and after luncheon rode in a 
jaunting-car for some distance up the river Lee, then to a 
point where the broad harbor, formerly known as the Cove of 
Cork, lay before us in the light of a perfect day. This 
harbor equals in size and beauty that of New York, is fully 
land-locked, the ample river Lee coming into it, quite as 
the Hudson enters New York Bay. Queenstown itself is 
a small town of little interest. The trains from the in- 
terior have brought in hundreds of emigrants to take ship 
to-morrow for America, who crowd the quays and move along 
the street fronting them in long procession. They are mostly 
young men and women, a few of middle age, and fewer still of 
aged, robust in health, and, as it seemed to me, more pleased 
than sad at the prospect of leaving a land which promises so 
little to their future. But surely there must be some funda- 
mental wrong in a country when the very substance and flower 
of it go into voluntary exile, as the Irish have done and are 
now doing I Three thousand sailed from this port alone last 
week. 



8 Arrive at Cork. 

At half-past three p.m. we took the train for Cork, twelve 
miles distant, the road following the Lee. The "pleasant 
waters of the river Lee " flow down to the sea through a 
charming valley, thickly set with comfortable houses, with now 
and then the large, handsome residence of the rich citizen, 
well retired among old trees in full leaf, with lawns of the 
deepest green. Very much of the land we saw is in grass for 
pasture, and I have never seen at home such rank, dense herb- 
age and perfect mat of intense green. These small pastures are 
enclosed in substantial walls of stone, laid in mortar, as in- 
deed are all boundary walls. The larger fields are surrounded 
by green hedges. Flocks of Southdown sheep grazed content- 
edly in these, with now and then a herd of comfortable cows. 
All along the roads the gray boundary walls are overgrown 
with ivy ; on the wide upper surfaces violets and tinted daisies 
peep from green mosses, and rich grass studded with dande- 
lions hide the lower stones. Everywhere is green luxuriance. 
Quaint cottages, mostly of stone covered with plaster, with 
roofs of thatch, and half ivy-clad, appear frequently, blending 
harmoniously with the landscape, and forming pastoral scenes 
of peaceful beauty. 

We took rooms in the comfortable Hotel Imperial at Cork, 
and after a good dinner, well served in our private parlor, re- 
tired early to sleep on huge bedsteads of solid mahogany, 
deeply curtained, our first sleep on British soil. I found my- 
self lurching from side to side in my walking for several hours 
after landing, and steadying myself as when the steamer 
rolled. 

May 9. — A rainy day. Ordered a landau, and drove about 
the town, which lies pleasantly on both sides of the Lee, slop- 
ing up from the river, two branches of which unite just below 
the city. The two parts are connected by nine handsome 
stone bridges, one of them of great age. The population of 
Cork is about 80,000, and it has a very considerable export 
trade. It is well and solidly built, with not much of marked 
interest to see. 

We visited the Cathedral, a modern and not impressive 
structure of gray stone, with a fine mosaic chancel floor. 
Went to the little church of St. Ann, in whose belfry hang 
the bells of Shandon, widely famous for the purity and 
sweetness of their tones, and thought to be in these respects 



Blarney Castle. 9 

almost the finest in the world. The church was closed, but at 
a rear entrance we found a verger, who sent for his daughter, 
a young person of a fresh and pleasant face, who took us up 
into the old stone belfry and rang several changes, ending with 
"There is a Happy Land." The tones of the bells are ex- 
quisitely soft and sweet. In the little churchyard is buried, 
in the plain vault of his family. Rev. Francis Mahony, cele- 
brated as Father Prout, the scholarly and witty priest who 
died in 1866 in a monastery in Paris. Very tender are his 
verses to " The Shandon Bells," beginning : 

" With deep affection 
And recollection, 
I often think of 

Those Shandon bells. 
Whose sounds so wild would, 
In days of childhood, 
Fling round my cradle 
' - Their magic spells. 

" On this I ponder, 
Where'er I wander, 
And thus grow fonder, 

Sweet Cork, of thee ; 
With thy bells of Shandon, 
That sound so grand on 
The pleasant waters 

Of the river Lee." 

Returned to the hotel for lunch, and kept our parlor for the 
rest of the day, for it rained steadily. 

May 10. — The morning heavy and showery, but at noon 
clear and bright. Drove out to Blarney Castle, following the 
Lee up for three miles on its left bank, then turning into the val- 
ley of the Coman, a narrow, swift stream, following it some two 
miles farther. This we cross by a foot-bridge, and are in front 
of the highest wall of the square stone tower, built from the base 
of the projecting crag, on which the structure stands. This 
wall rises to the height of 120 feet, the opposing wall, by 
reason of its resting on the crag, being little more than half 
this height. This massive tower rises impressively, in almost 
perfect preservation, its battlements continuing almost intact. 
These project over the walls a distance of three feet, and at 
intervals are spaces opening downward, through which the 
besieged could look down the face of the walls, not only to 



10 The Blarney- Stone. 

see the operations of an assaulting force, but also to hurl 
down missiles of whatever sort upon it. Indeed, one of these 
openings is shown where the defenders are said to have poured 
down molten lead on Cromwell's soldiers. On the inner side 
of another portion of the projecting battlement, and so three 
feet from the wall, is a stone representing the traditional 
Blarney-Stone, the object of earnest osculation to all pilgrims 
here, by reason of its attributed power of conferring upon 
those who touch it with the lips an irresistible fascination. 
To kiss the present Blarney-Stone the devotee lies prone upon 
his stomach, reaches across the opening of three feet, grasps 
the upright iron stanchions extending on either side for a sup- 
port, one with each hand, pulls himself or herself (for one 
may be sure the gentler sex will not miss this opportunity of 
replenishing its armories with so fatal a weapon) forward until 
able, by bending downward nearly two feet, to press the lips 
upon the lower stone. It is really something of a feat, and 
ladies generally will require to be held firmly by the ankles 
while struggling forward. 

As I understand the matter, the Blarney-Stone was formerly 
a huge block of basaltic stone, which stood on the floor of 
the highest portion of the main tower, and so, easily acces- 
sible. The poet Milliken more than a hundred years ago sung 
of it : 

" There is a stone there 

That whoever kisses, 

Oh ! he never misses 
To grow eloquent. 

'Tis he may clamber 

To a lady's chamber 

Or become a member 
Of Parliament. 

* -x- * * * * 

Don't hope to hinder him 
Or to bewilder him ; 
Sure he's a pilgrim 

From the Blarney-Stone." 

The thick walls are pierced at irregular intervals with 
loop-holes for archery. The winding stone stairs terminate 
on frequent landings with recesses where the men-at-arms 
might collect for concerted action. This fortress was built 
near the middle of the fifteenth century by Cormac McCarthy, 



" The Groves of Blarney." 11 

and vividly realizes all one has imagined of the grim strong- 
holds of the bold chieftains of those cruel ages when the 
strong preyed upon the weak, and men lived for war and 
rapine. A goodly prospect lay spread before the eyes of the 
warder as he looked forth from the turrets of this stout castle 
of Blarney : the gentle valley of the Coman winding amid the 
gradual hills of either bank to lose itself in the larger and 
still fairer valley of the Lee, rich in green pastures and 
delightful groves. The grounds on the banks of the Coman 
at the castle's foot are laid out with taste, but hardly corre- 
spond in particular features with the description of the poet 
Milliken. 

"The groves of Blarney, 
They look so charming, 
Down by the purlings 

Of sweet silent brooks. 
All decked by posies 
That spontaneous grow there, 
Planted in order 
In the rocky nooks. 
'Tis there the daisy 
And the sweet carnation. 
The blooming pink 
And the rose so fair ; 
Likewise the lily 
And the daffodilly. 
All flowers that scent 
The sweet open air. 

****** 

There are statues gracing 
This noble place in, 
All heathen gods 

And nymphs so fair, 
Bold Neptune, Cse.sar, 
And Nebuchadnezzar, 
All standing naked 

In the open air \" 

****** 

Enough remains, however, to remind the visitor of the poet's 
further description : 

" There gravel walks are 
For recreation, 
And meditation 
In sweet solitude. 



12 A Delightful Drive. 

'Tis there the lover 
May hear the dove or 
The gentle plover 
In the afternoon." 



The drive to the castle is delightful. In one pasture of not 
more than six acres were twenty-five cattle grazing the 
luxuriant turf, and the driver of our landau said it would 
keep forty head all summer. We passed a field where a 
number of cows were feeding, and were told they belonged to 
the landlord, who had seized them for rent and had put them 
here, waiting a chance to dispose of them. Our driver said 
this would be hard to do, as no one in Cork would dare buy 
them, and no shipper would allow them to be sent out of the 
country with his. Consequently, they have almost no value. 
The landlord of the greater part of the land hereabouts is 
Lord Cork, who has no residence here, but lives and spends 
his money abroad. The annual rent for such pasture as that 
mentioned above is three pounds per acre. 

At 4 P.M. drove to St. Ann's, where I had arranged yesterday 
with the verger to have his son chime the Shandon bells. 
We heard half-a-dozen tunes, sitting in our open carriage. 
The tones floated sweetly down from the old belfry, justifying 
the praises given these fine old bells. Drove thence along 
the upper part of the city among the best residences, the 
most extensive of which is owned by a Mr. Murphy, of a firm 
of distillers here. 

Cork is a handsome, well-built city, amid beautiful surround- 
ings, and has an appearance of fair prosperity. But the 
wretched appearance of a considerable portion of the popula- 
tion indicates a depth of misery under the surface. There are 
said to be two thousand paupers in the city and near suburbs 
cared for by public charity, and whiskey, it is said, will explain 
seventy-five per cent of the cases. The spring is much in 
advance of ours. We have had on our table here new 
potatoes, asparagus, cucumbers, and cauliflowers, grown in 
the immediate vicinity in the open air. 

May II. — Left for Killarney at 12 m, reaching the Lake 
Hotel there at 4 p.m. by the Great Southwestern Railwa}^, via 
Mallow. To this point the country on either hand is of the 
same charmingly pastoral character as all we have heretofore 



Killarney. 13 

seen, but soon after presents a less fertile and cultivated 
appearance, stony hill-sides, neglected fields and stretches of 
bog-land alternating with better soil and cultivation. In one 
dreary tract, made more so by the chill rain which had begun 
to fall, we noticed, from the carriage windows, the procession 
of a peasant's funeral, made up of little donkeys attached 
to the clumsy two-wheel carts used on the farms. There 
were not less than a dozen of these, each carrying three or 
four mourners, who sat on them as best they could, the 
w'omen wrapped up to the ears in large black or red cloaks, a 
train of grotesque misery. 

Our hotel is situated directly on the Lakes of Killarney, or 
more precisely on Castlelough Bay, opening from Lough 
Leane, the largest of the three sheetsof water which constitute 
the Lakes of Killarney. The country had improved in appear- 
ance as we approached the town of the same name, but there 
is little intimaticm of change in its physical conformation, 
until, on a sudden, we come on the sight of an exceedingly 
irregular stretch of peaceful water, lying softly in the midst 
of meadows and many mountains of most agreeable form 
and variety. The rain is falling chillily, but in a comfortable 
private parlor, with bedrooms fronting the water, over a 
good dinner, we wait in patient contentment for a bright 
to-morrow. 

May 12, Sunday. — Bright and clear. Walked along the bend 
of the bay for a mile, and by the payment of a shilling each 
entered through the lodge-gate to the grounds of Mr. H. A. 
Herbert, within which are the well-preserved ruins of Muck- 
ross Church and Abbey, built in 1343, on the site of a still 
older church of Franciscan monks. This is said to be the best- 
preserved ruin in Ireland. The outer and partition walls, 
chimneys and tower are almost intact, but the roof and floor 
of the upper or third story are quite wanting. The mullioned 
east window is perfect and graceful. The abbey is quite 
separated from the body of the church by a partition wall of 
stone, and the cloisters, running round three sides of a small 
court, are in perfect preservation. In the centre of this court 
is a magnificent yew, of very great age evidently, and said to 
be of equal date with the structure itself. On the second 
floor were the living-rooms of the fraternity, the refectory, 
the store-rooms, the kitchen, with fireplace so enormous 



14: Muckross Abbey. 

that a hermit is said, a hundred years ago, to have made it his 
abode for eleven years. The abbot's room adjoins the refectory, 
and through narrow slits of windows he could note the monks 
as they moved about the cloisters below. The infirmary was 
also on this floor, and so arranged that through openings in 
the wall the sick could witness the services in the church 
adjoining. The structure, under the best circumstances, must 
have been cheerless to a degree, and I can easily imagine the 
infirmary crowded with rheumatic brothers. Best not coun- 
terfeit, however, for my lord abbot had an exceedingly vile 
dungeon at his disposal, as we saw, where simulated twinges 
would soon become real. A royal endowment of land went 
with the abbey, the fair meadows, rich and broad all about, 
and noble woodlands, now succeeded by planted trees of 
oak and beech and ash, throwing their shadows to-day along 
sward of the deepest green, where a great flock of contented 
sheep are feeding, much, it maybe, as in the good old days 
before the Reformation came to harass and suppress. Many 
a jolly abbot must have ridden his sleek palfrey with " jing- 
ling bridle-rein" over the lovely demesne of Muckross Abbey. 

After dinner drove to the abbey, past the handsome resi- 
dence of Mr. Herbert, the owner of many thousand acres, 
including a good part of the old abbey lands, which, upon its 
suppression by Elizabeth, was bestowed with an earl's title 
upon a McCarthy, the last of the line marrying a Herbert, 
several generations back. But he was badly in debt, and a 
fair wife becoming faithless, he went to America seven years 
ago. It was understood here that he was engaged to marrj^ a 
Baltimore lady, and the tenants had prepared their wedding 
presents, but finally it came to be said that the lady, not liking 
the divorce, had withdrawn from the match. 

In the preserves through which the road lies we saw many 
score rabbits, very tame. After crossing by a bridge the 
narrow channel connecting the lower and middle lakes and 
skirting a third of the circumference of the latter, we reached 
the Tore Cascade, formed by a little stream flowing from a 
basin of water 2200 feet up the side of Margeton, called the 
Devil's Punch-Bowl. The fall is about 70 feet, and is pretty, 
but not notably so. From the top of the ravine is a charming 
view of mountains, lakes and smiling fields. 

May 13. — Engaged a boat and four stout rowers, and made 



The Lakes of Killarney. 15 

a full tour of the lakes, passing twice over their whole length 
of twelve miles, taking the entire day for it. I cannot 
describe, even in the most imperfect way, the Lakes of Kil- 
larney. They lie among the feet of a score of mountains, 
winding in and out of their recesses in the most ravishing 
way, widening here, narrowing there, gemmed with I know 
not how many islets, green to the water's edge. The moun- 
tains have each its peculiar form and character, very much de- 
tached, green with vegetation well up toward their crests, and 
these of a soft brown color, easily becoming purple and violet 
as the sun touches them through an atmosphere of haze or 
light mist. Although not impressive by their height to one 
who has seen their lofty brethren in Mexico and California — 
the highest, Carrantual of Macgillicuddy's Reeks, rising only 
to the height of 3400 feet — these mountains still have a sweet 
majesty of their own, and offer constant and delightful sur- 
prises. Nowhere have I seen such delightful variety. Indeed, 
these lakes and their surroundings surpass anything I had 
imagined of them, and I have never seen any description at 
all adequate, nor is any possible. They fulfill the dream of 
the poet and the imagination of the painter. We had a day 
of perfect weather, and mark it with a white stone. 

We landed on " sweet Innisfallen," an island of some twenty 
acres, of pleasantly diversified surface, a solid turf of the rich- 
est green, studded with noble ash-trees centuries old. The 
glades are strewn with primroses, violets, cowslips, bluebells, 
blooming shrubs of many sorts, and the air is tuneful with 
many birds, the thrush among them. The ruins of a large 
abbey lie scattered about, said tt) have been founded in the year 
600, but of this I know nothing. But the old churchmen, as well 
as those of the present time, had a happy faculty of selecting 
sites for their establishments, and one notices that even the 
heretical Methodists of our day pick out, with infallible certain- 
ty, the most romantic and picturesque spots for their great 
camp-meetings 

We touched at Ross Island, an island only at high water, 
being connected with the main-land by a narrow isthmus. 
This is only less interesting in its loveliness than Innisfallen, 
and has the pretty well-preserved remains of a considerable 
castle, said to be the last in Munster to surrender to Crom- 
well. Several old cannon project from a preserved portion of 



16 In Dublin. 

the wall, looking, from their position, more likely to harm the 
besieged than the besiegers. They seem almost absurdly in- 
congruous, stuck on walls built to protect only from a flight 
of arrows. One Krupp gun would knock the whole structure, 
tower and all, into "smithereens" in two hours' time. On 
Innisfallen is a holly, 15 feet in circumference, said to be the 
largest in Ireland. The arbutus grows to the size of large 
trees on this and other of the islands. 

Earl Kenmare is lord of the land here, and has a new resi- 
dence of red sandstone in a great park near the lower lake, re- 
ported to have cost him ninety thousand pounds. He is said 
to be deeply in debt, and living beyond his income. 

May 14. — We had at breakfast a salmon taken from the 
lower lake last evening, of delicate flavor. On our return 
yesterday from the upper lake, at a certain part of the Long 
Range, a stretch of narrow water separating the middle from 
the upper lake, we passed a long, detached rock, worn by 
action of the water into a fancied likeness to the hull of a man- 
of-war. The captain of our boat, Paddy Lynch, a stout man, 
middle-aged, serious of visage, but of quick, Hibernian wit, 
ordered the rowing to cease, saying it was usual here to hold 
a little talk with Captain Green, and proceeded to execute a 
colloquy in a loud voice, after the manner of mariners hailing 
at sea, revealing that bad Captain Green had been to town 
the day before, and been confessedly drunken. Each sentence 
was given a pause after it, and one after another repeated by 
a remarkable echo, in startling distinctness. At another 
point, opposite Eagle Rock, Paddy awakened an echo repeated 
seven times, with lessening volume. 

Took train at 11. 15 for Dublin, via Mallow, arriving here at 
5.45 — distance, one hundred and eighty-six miles. The coun- 
try passed over is, for the most part, of the same fertile, lux- 
urious character, as nearly all we have seen in this delight- 
ful countr}^ One can tire himself with writing superlative 
phrases in praise of it. Rode over the charming country 
where the poet Spenser once had a residence, crossing the 
little river Awbeg, the Mulla of the poet. We are quartered 
at the Shelburne, in spacious and handsome rooms, looking 
out on Stephen's Green, a well-kept park of some twenty 
acres. 

May 15. — Drove through Phoenix Park, a level pleasure 



Trinity College. 17 

ground of about eighteen hundred acres. It has handsome 
parts, but, as a whole, it is not equal to Central Park in New 
York nor Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Its natural tameness 
is relieved by clumps of noble oaks, picturesquely placed, 
with hundreds of deer scattered over the sward. Drove after- 
ward over the city, along the streets of the best residences 
and those of the best shops. I have seen Sackville Street 
mentioned as one of the most magnificent in Europe. It is a 
wide street, with neat shops on both sides, but the architec- 
ture is common and bald, and the shops small. The buildings 
are not more than four stories high anywhere. This street is 
ennobled by the Nelson Monument, a symmetrical circular 
shaft rising from the middle of it to the height of 120 feet, 
with a marble statue of the hero at top, 13 feet high. The 
whole is majestic, and one feels that it is really worthy of its 
subject. 

After lunch, walked to the Bank of Ireland to draw some 
money. It is not often that a bank gets into such quarters, 
this huge granite building with its beautiful Grecian portico 
having been the House of the Irish Parliament up to the time 
of the Union. The House of Lords stands exactly as it was 
left, even to the long table with the chairs about it, where the 
peers sat. In the portico before the entrance to the bank, 
two soldiers from a regiment of Highlanders here paced quick- 
ly back and forth. Opposite the bank, on College Green, is 
Trinity College, an enormous pile of buildings, standing about 
a large quadrangular paved court, with grounds attached of 
at least forty acres. This land once belonged to All Hallow 
Priory, a very old foundation, and the college was established 
as far back as 1320, but had several periods of disaster, until 
in the time of Elizabeth it received such grants, gifts and en- 
dowments as put it into the flourishing condition it continues 
to hold. It has now twelve hundred students in attendance. 
The term of study is four years, and one of the professors, 
who was exceedingly courteous to us, stated that a student 
could live comfortably in commons and carry on his studies 
for eighty-six pounds a year. We visited the examination 
room, the chapel, the commons hall, and the grand library 
with its arched roof and galleries and rows of marble busts of 
men famous in science and letters, from Aristotle down. This 
library, now numbering nearly 250,000 volumes, began in a 
2 



18 The Great Brewery of Guinness &= Co. 

singular way. The nucleus was formed by the subscriptions 
of the English Army to commemorate the victory over the 
Spaniards at Kinsale, and on these shelves rest the rich treas- 
ures since accrued. I cannot attempt any enumeration of the 
rare and beautiful books and manuscripts beyond price, which 
moved my soul to covetousness, during the all too brief visit. 
The organ over the entrance to the theatre or examination 
room is said to have been taken from one of the ships of the 
Spanish Armada. 

Passing a fruit-store, I noticed a barrel of handsome, sound 
apples from Boston, price twenty shillings. This is cheaper 
than I bought apples of my grocer at any time last winter, 
and this dealer said that until lately he had sold them at ten 
shillings per barrel. 

D'Arcy is the name of one of the Norman families cutting 
a grand figure in this isle for some centuries after the Con- 
quest. Looking out of window this morning, I saw it painted 
on the side of a poulterer's cart going by. In like manner 
we have in New York descendants of the high historic names 
of O'Sullivan, O'Donohue and McCarthy flourishing peaceful 
whips over the coach horses of Americans who cannot trace a 
great-grandfather. 

May 1 6. — Visited the great brewery of Guinness & Co., 
covering forty acres on the right bank of the Liffey. They 
manufacture only porter or brown stout, and send it out only 
in barrels and half barrels. This they do at present to the ex- 
tent of twelve thousand hogsheads a day, and can increase the 
amount to twenty-five thousand hogsheads. They supply the 
home demand, and export to all parts of the inhabitable globe 
where the English tongue is spoken. All the processes are on 
an enormous scale, with the use of all possible appliances. 
Presenting my card to a liveried attendant at the entrance, 
we were ushered into a handsome waiting-room until permis- 
sion could be obtained from some superior, and then placed 
in charge of a guide, to be shown such part of the processes as 
I might request. Thorough cleanliness exists everywhere. 
The brown color is imparted by roasting a certain proportion 
of the malt to a dark tint. After the hops are added, the fer- 
mentation goes on in huge, square tanks, holding fourteen 
thousand barrels each, and cooled from ice made by steam 
power on the premises. The fluid is then drawn into vats to 



Dublin Castle and St. Patrick's Cathedral. 19 

ripen. These are huge casks, of which there are two hundred 
and forty, each holding the inconceivable quantity of eighteen 
hundred hogsheads. From these the now perfected liquor is 
conveyed in subterranean pipes nearly a quarter of a mile to 
a great covered space beside the river, where it is barrelled 
for shipment. That for home consumption is of lighter body 
and is allowed to remain in the vats for a month only, while 
that for export beyond sea is not only heavier, but remains 
in the vats ripening from a year to eighteen months. In a 
well-appointed and clean stable I saw two hundred largest 
sized Clydesdale horses, used in delivering casks of the porter 
to city buyers. 

Visited the Castle of Dublin, the residence of the Lord-Lieu- 
tenant of Ireland, now occupied by Lord Londonderry. It is 
an architecturally mean pile of buildings, standing about a 
large, open court, chiefly of brick, constructed originally, in 
the year 1220, for the defence of the town, and early in 
Elizabeth's reign fitted up as a viceregal residence. We enter 
the court by a massive gateway and find the housekeeper, 
a pleasant, middle-aged lady, who shows us the grand stair- 
case, the presence chamber, where receptions are held, the 
ball-room, the portrait chamber, the private drawing-room, 
and bowing us out, accepts a shilling with gratitude. These 
rooms are not impressive, only moderately grand, and the 
entrance rooms and passages and surroundings are insignifi- 
cant and gloomy. 

Visited St. Patrick's Cathedral, on the site of a church said 
to have been founded by St. Patrick in person, and declined 
to taste the water from a well in the north transept, at which 
he is said to have baptized the natives. The present building 
was begun in 1190 and added to in 1370. Only the old form 
and some crypts remain unchanged, for twenty-five years ago 
Sir Guinness, the brown-stout knight, " restored" it by facing 
all the outside walls and pretty nearly rebuilding all parts, so 
that it has little venerableness. In the nave, side by side, lie 
Swift and Mrs. Hester Johnson, the " Stella" of his verse. He 
was dean here, and his pulpit stands in the baptistery. At the 
western door is a queer monument to the wife of Richard 
Boyle, the great Earl of Cork, wrought in black marble, deco- 
rated with wood-carving, gilding and painting, showing the 
earl and his lady reclining, with their sixteen children about 



20 Ch'ist Church Cathedral. 

them, seven of whom are demure maidens with long black 
hair, resembling the Sutherland Sisters, as one of the young 
people of my party remarked. The inscription sets forth that 
the " religious wife lieth entombed here with them all, expect- 
ing a joyful resurrection." There is also a bust to John Philpot 
Curran, looking as one might think he was indeed, and a tablet 
to Samuel Lover, "poet and painter." 

Christ Church Cathedral is ancient enough, and would 
be interesting doubtless had not the distiller, Henry Roe, 
recently "restored" it out of all odor of old sanctity. The 
distillers and brewers seem to have pretty much all the money 
in the country, and well they may, since they furnish the one 
article of universal consumption. There is in a side aisle a 
monumental tomb of Strongbow, the first invader of Ireland. 
He lies on his tomb clothed in mail, and beside him his son, 
who was killed by his father. Very likely it was done by divid- 
ing him just below the waist, for only the upper half is shown 
in the effigy. History does not state the cause of this impious 
taking off, but as the doughty warrior is quite minus a nose, 
perhaps the provocation was that his unfilial offspring bit that 
member off in a pet. 

Dublin presents to the stranger a prosperous appearance — 
more so, perhaps, than the facts will warrant. It lies pleas- 
antly on both banks of the river Liffey, which, running from 
west to east, is embanked within the city limits by walls of solid 
stone masonry with wide quays, which show considerable traffic. 
The river opens into a broad harbor six miles below, and rises 
and falls with the tide. The city is well and solidly built of 
brick and stone, and would be bright except for the smoke 
from the bituminous coal which has left its grime on the house 
fronts, and so smutched as to positively disfigure the elaborate 
fagades of the magnificent public buildings. The main streets 
are wide, well paved with stone, very charming to eyes used 
to the streets of New York and Brooklyn, and cheerful with a 
moderate degree of metropolitan life. I have lieard the women 
of Dublin described as beautiful. Those entitled to commen- 
dation anywise approaching the significance of that word have 
kept well out of sight for three days now. It would seem to 
me that trade must be light from the appearance- of the prin- 
cipal streets. It has almost no manufactures. This chief 
city of Ireland has not quite held its own in population. 



Belfast. 21 

This was 254,000 in 1861, 246,000 in 1871, and 249,000 in 
1881. 

May 17. — Took train on the Great Northern Railway at 
7.25 A.M. for Belfast, distant one hundred and twelve miles. 
Reached the Imperial Hotel at 10.30. The whole way is over 
a most charming country, mostly level, but often diversified 
with gentle valleys, long-drawn vales and undulating slopes of 
brightest verdure, such scenery as poets feign, the remote and 
romantic hills of Antrim always in the background. Far as 
the eye can reach on either hand, the luxuriant champaign is 
divided by old stonewalls or hedges of yellow furze into little 
fields of arable and pasture land, four-square, triangular, loz- 
enge, stellar, circular. Often the eye rests on the gray ruins of 
castle or monastery, picturesquely placed on the brow of some 
commanding eminence. At Balbriggan peasants were troop- 
ing along the roads to a county fair. At Drogheda we crossed 
the Boyne, and looked up the valley where stout Cromwell 
breached the walls of the well-defended town, and where, later, 
William of Orange defeated James II. with bloody slaughter, 
on through Dunkald and Lurgan and many another historic 
town ; for all these towns and hamlets have traditions and 
records going back for centuries. 

Visited the flax-mills of Mr. Michael Andrews at Ardogne, a 
surburb of the city, and were freely shown the manufacture 
of his beautiful linen goods. The weaving is done by hand- 
looms of the simplest sort, almost rude in their construction, 
in musty old stone rooms on the ground floor of a number of 
irregular, detached buildings, enclosed in a high stone wall. 
We were also shown the various patterns and qualities of the 
finished goods in the store-room, but for prices and goods 
were referred to Messrs. Murphy & Orr, their sole agents here, 
of whom we made some purchases, and were then driven over 
the city for an hour. It is solidly and handsomely built, with 
wide, well-paved and kept streets, in outward appearance very 
like several of our best second-rate cities. It has a thrifty, 
prosperous look, as if there might be less whiskey and more 
industry than I have remarked elsewhere on this island. It 
appears, at one view, that the native race has been advantage- 
ously grafted with another good stock, or that some difference 
of religion and mental aptitudes and manners have the ascen- 
dency, and we can readily believe that the canny Scotch are 



23 Giant's Causeway. 

at the fore here, and that their sagacity and plucky persistence 
have created this prosperity. Even the shifty Yankee shrinks 
before these more rugged and grim Scotch-Irish, w^ho, crossing 
the Atlantic, take front rank in whatever calling, like those 
who fill the pews in Dr. Hall's church in New York on Sunday, 
and make to themselves friends of the mammon of unright- 
eousness on week days. 

May i8. — Left for Giant's Causeway, sixty-seven miles by 
rail to Portrush, then eight miles to the Causeway by electric 
tramway. The intervening country wears the same delightful 
aspect I have so vainly attempted to describe, its green mantle 
extending to the very tip-ends of its northernmost coast in the 
latitude of Labrador. Near the entrance to the Causeway is a 
handsome summer hotel, commanding a wide and delightful 
prospect of land and sea. It is fitted with modern improve- 
ments, has electric lights and lawn-tennis grounds, and the man- 
ager stated that they have guests, transient and permanent, from 
all parts of the globe. Hired a boat with two rowers and a 
guide, and after lunch walked down into a deep craggy cove, 
quite suitable for a smuggler's landing in the old time, with 
his cargo of brandy and claret from Bordeaux. We have been 
favored with excellent weather ever since leaving home, and 
here our good fortune continued, as the sea lay smooth as a 
pond, and the tide was at its ebb, enabling us to enter with 
our boat two huge caverns, worn by the action of the waves 
on the limestone rock into vaulted chambers, one 300 and the 
other 600 feet in length. The perfectly formed arches are 60 
feet in height, with bands of red and yellow color along the 
base and up the sides, caused by the presence of iron and 
sulphur in the rocks. The sea within is of the deepest green ; 
the least noise deepens to a solemn and almost awful sound. 
Near by the entrance is a crag so rounded and battlemented 
into the form of a castle that it is said a stray vessel from the 
Spanish Armada fired several broadsides into it, in the belief 
that it was the Castle of Dunluce, five miles down the coast. 
Beyond is an amphitheatre formed by a perpendicular wall of 
trap-rock over 300 feet high, set with precise uniformity in a 
semicircle, fronting the sea. The distance across on the sea 
line must be at least 1000 feet. All particulars conspire to 
help the illusion. A row of columns some 80 feet high runs 
around the top ; below this is a projection, broad and rounded, 



Dunluce Castle. 23 

like an immense bench ; then another row of pillars, and so on 
down to the base, where the water of the cove is enclosed by 
a circle of black boulder-stones. This is exceedingly im- 
pressive. The whole coast here is bold and craggy, and the 
entire scene one of grandeur. 

The Causeway itself is composed of basaltic rocks standing 
in the form of a promontory of no great extent, and rising out 
of the sea nowhere more than 20 feet, sloping down from the 
middle or ridge of the little cape, so that we easily stepped 
out of our boat on one of them near the outer point. They 
are said by geologists to have been formed by the cooling of 
the molten material of which they are composed, the fusion 
being due to volcanic action. Chemically they are made up 
of, say, one half of flinty earth, one quarter iron, one quarter 
clay and lime. Their color is a brownish gra3\ As the melt- 
ed mass cooled, it crystallized into these pillars, which stand 
closely fitted into each other, only the smooth tops, upon 
which we walked, being visible, except where a mass of them 
rises above the general level here and there, or at the outer 
edges they are exposed at the sides. None, perhaps, are more 
than a foot, or at the most, I should say from those I saw, a 
foot and a half in diameter. A curious person who counted 
them states that they number over forty thousand. Almost all 
have five, six or seven sides ; there are three of nine sides and 
quite a number of four and eight sides. These figures are 
taken at second hand, of course. It will be understood that 
the form of the pillars can only be known by noting the lines 
of cleavage on the upper ends, or tops, as only these are 
shown, except in the cases mentioned above. Where an entire 
pillar can be examined, it is found to be smooth, as if polish- 
ed and formed in sections of, say, one foot long, fitting into 
each other exactly like the ball and socket joint of an animal. 
I expected to be disappointed in the Causeway, but, on the 
contrary, taking it in connection with its surroundings, it ex- 
ceeded my expectations. 

Hired a jaunting-car so as to drive back to Portrush and 
see Dunluce Castle, a most picturesque ruin, rising from an 
insulated crag, separated from the main-land by a narrow 
chasm. The masonry of the walls is so fitted to the irregu- 
larity of the crag that crag and castle seem one. It stands 
100 feet above the sea, its hoary towers looking out on the 



24 Attend a Presbyterian Church in Belfast. 

broad Atlantic, as they have for centuries. It is washed on 
all sides by the waves, except at one point, where a wall is 
built up across the chasm, the top of which, not more than 
eighteen inches wide, forming the only approach from the 
structure on the main-land, and, of course, the only way by 
which it could be assaulted. Its age is not accurately known, 
but history finds it in possession of the English in the fifteenth 
century. Many romantic stories are told of it. Walter Scott 
visited it in 1814, and described it in his diary. The seaward 
view and along the coast in its neighborhood, this fine spring 
afternoon, is glorious. 

We reached our hotel here in Belfast at 9 p.m., taking the 
main line of the railway at Coleraine, near the village of Lima- 
vaddy, made famous by Thackeray's " Peg of Limavaddy." 

May 19, Sunday. — Warm and pleasant. All attended a Pres- 
byterian church opened in 1827 by Dr. Chalmers, The con- 
gregation large, solid and respectable-looking. Services be- 
gan at 11.30 o'clock. The minister occupied a high pulpit, 
and the choir sat behind him. There was no organ nor any 
other musical instrument in sight or in use. The services 
were quite plain and business-like. After the second psalm 
had been sung from the metrical version, the preacher deliv- 
ered a short sermon to the children. This sermon presupposed 
a sound early training in the essentials, as he dwelt chiefly 
on the mysterious nature of the Eucharist. Another psalm 
was sung, and looking at my watch and finding the 
hour 12.15, I began to congratulate myself that the services 
were to be brief ; but, after a short prayer, the minister gave 
out another psalm of twenty-two verses, with instructions to 
sing but sixteen, read another chapter followed by another 
psalm, then entered on the real work of the day, and gave a 
sermon evidently sound to the core, then a short prayer, with 
still another psalm. Besides these psalms there were two 
hymns coming in somewhere. The psalms were sung in a 
sing-song sort of way, all the congregation joining with full 
throats, the choir only giving to the volume of the sound a 
certain steadiness and ornament. The effect was not unpleas- 
ing. One of the stanzas ran as follows : 

" When wicked men arose, 
My adversaries all 
To eat my flesh arose ; 
They stumbled and did fall." 



Carrickfergus Castle. 25 

A sturdy folk, these Scotch-Irish, fearing God, loving gain and 
hating the Pope. 

Mr. Jury, the landlord of the Imperial Hotel, has been ex- 
ceedingly civil to us, furnishing his private landau to take us 
about town, and after lunch sending his private jaunting-car, 
with a driver in full livery, to take the two young people and 
myself to Carrickfergus Castle, ten miles down the spacious 
harbor, v^here we went in such dignity of equipage that I 
might have been taken for a rack-renting, absentee landlord, 
and fired at from behind a hedge. I was rather disappointed 
in the castle, which is described as " one of the most complete 
specimens of ancient Anglo-Norman fortresses in the king- 
dom." The narrow approach to the entrance is between two 
high stone walls, and the old portcullis is raised to its place, 
ready to descend in its grooves of stone. The interior has 
been modified by the erection of barracks. The cross of St. 
George fioats from the donjon tower, and several figures of 
the soldiers of a part of a Highland regiment quartered there, 
lounging on the battlements, gave the exterior quite a look of 
romance. The famous regiment of the Black Watch, renown- 
ed in history and story for more than a hundred years, is sta- 
tioned now in Belfast. The castle, as it stands at present, is 
said to have been built in the twelfth century. 

Belfast has grown with steady rapidity. Its population in 
1821 was 37,000 ; in 1881, 208,000. The land on which it stands 
and much of the surrounding country is owned by the Done- 
gal family, descendants of Sir Arthur Chichester, who took it 
in 1612, and so on back to a grant of the province of Ulster 
to De Courcy by Henry II. The oldest son of the Prince of 
Wales is expected here on a visit to-morrow, and the streets 
are being decorated for his reception. Looking up Donegal 
Place, the street our hotel is on, I notice one American flag 
floating in the Irish air. There is a hum of expectation all 
about ; the papers are full of the "visit of royalty ;" the news- 
boys are hawking a pamphlet containing a programme of the 
ceremonies, to last two days. And this young sprig of royal- 
ty is only the grandson of Victoria, with a tough grandmother 
and a healthy father between him and the throne. 

May 20. — Visited the Museum, and noted the Irish antiqui- 
ties with some interest, weapons and utensils of the stone and 
bronze ages, and a few later ornaments — spearheads, dirks, 
etc., etc. A lean display, yet Black speaks of it as very fine. 



26 Eccle/echan, the Home of Carlyle. 

I suppose the truth is, there is not much left, if all objects of 
the kind remaining in Ireland were brought together. Time 
and war and rapine and poverty have swept them away. 

At 4 P.M. left Belfast by rail for Larne, an hour's ride north- 
ward on the coast, where we took the side-wheel steamboat 
" Princess Beatrice" across the North Channel to Stranraer, 
at the head of Loch Ryan, this being the shortest sea passage 
to Scotland, and done in two and a half hours. Thence by 
rail to Dumfries, seventy-three miles, reaching the King's 
Arms Hotel at ii p.m. In Loch Ryan passed the Queen's 
yacht, having on board Prince Victor on his way to Belfast. 

We left Ireland with deep and pleasant impressions. 

May 21. — Warm and sunny. Hired a pair of horses and 
wagonette and drove to Ecclefechan, eighteen miles, crossing 
the Annan, a fine broad river, and over a charming, undulat- 
ing country of green pastures, meadows and highly cultivated 
fields, where apparently all the people, men, women and chil- 
dren, were hard at work planting various crops. Drove to 
the little tavern. Bush's Hotel, and had an excellent lunch. 
Visited the house where Carlyle was born, a small, two-story 
stone cottage, built by his father, who was a mason by trade. 
The only room on the ground floor is the kitchen, and above 
that the room where he was born, about 14 feet square, and 
besides, only a bedroom not more than 6 by 9 feet. The cot- 
tage is one of a row of similar ones on the south side of a poor 
street, and connected with the one adjoining it on the east by 
an arched way. It is a mean, paltry street, with wide, dusty 
roadway running between low stone cottages, white with 
plaster, not a green tree or shrub to soften the hot glare of 
the sun. Just before the street reaches the Carlyle cottage, 
the sewer of the village, which to that point is covered, flows 
out into an open way and runs down the middle of the street 
in front of the cottage, offensive to a degree. The daughter 
of his favorite sister Jane, the niece who cared for him in his 
lonely last days in London, married her own cousin, the son 
of his brother Saunders who went to America, and is now 
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, and resides in London. Her father's 
name was Aitkens. She has bought the cottage here and re- 
cently fitted up the larger of the rooms on the second floor 
with articles of furniture brought from the London house at 
24 Cheyne Row, the carpet, the lounge and some chairs from 



The Carlyles. 27 

the sitting-room there. His study-chair stands by his study- 
table, on which rests his student-lamp, with his tobacco-cutter, 
quite a formidable implement, for cutting " plug," beside his 
little copper coffee-pot, and the clock from the London kitchen 
ticks on the wall. One easily imagines the sources of his 
obfuscating dyspepsia when looking at this apparatus for mid- 
night coffee and nicotine. There are many photographs of 
himself at various periods and some of Mrs. Carlyle, the dates 
and some circumstances connected with them being fixed by 
a note to each in his own hand. It is hard to see how Mrs. 
Carlyle, judging from these, could have ever been a handsome 
woman. To be sure, there are none showing her as younger 
than fifty years, and she was evidently much worn, but the 
long, strong, nervous face, with its excessively high forehead, 
is not of a sort associated with beauty of feature. But, as all 
know, a photograph, while actually reproducing whatever falls 
upon it, is strangely deceptive by what fails to reach it. A 
sadly touching one is that of himself — it must have been in 
his very last days — seated, all shrunken of face and form, 
wnth his fair young niece standing beside him. Unlike the 
rest, this has no inscription from his pen, for the hand which 
had guided it for so many laborious years would not seem 
capable of touching it again. From his birthplace, went to 
his grave in the poor little churchyard of the Presbyterian 
church, near by. In among the numerous graves, with their 
plain headstones, is a small space enclosed by a plain, sub- 
stantial iron fence, with three large, upright stones, his own, 
of red sandstone, having this simple inscription written by 

himself: 

*' Humilitate." 

Here rests Thomas Carlyle, who was born at Ecclefechan, 

^th Dec, 1795, and died at 

24 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, on Saturday^ 

Sth Feb., 188 1. 

Lower down is an inscription, in the same brief terms, relating 
to his brother John. The stone on the right of his is to his 
father and mother, with a touching epitaph written by him, 
and the one on the left bears the names of other members of 
the Carlyle family. There are none of his name now alive in 
Ecclefechan, and Mrs. Carlyle lies buried in Haddington, near 
Edinburgh. 



28 What is Thought of Carlyle in Dutnfries. 

We drove back to Dumfries in the beautiful afternoon, 
along the road he took so often, many times on foot, his mind 
full of high thoughts and heroic purposes, his heart sad and 
lonely, sure only of one thing, that he would never do a base 
deed, that he would fight all forms of vice and false pretence, 
though it should lead to destitution and the obloquy of men. 
Grave, stern, grandly poetic soul, with many failings, harsh 
prejudices and sharp and bitter speech, yet true to the inward 
voice of conscience and duty ! 

Carlyle does not seem to be much thought of in Dumfries, 
nor, it would seem, much cared for in Ecclefechan. Mine 
hostess of the King's Arms insisted that no person attended 
his funeral outside the circle of mourners and friends who 
came up from London with the remains, and here in Dumfries, 
she said, nobody liked him. Remembering that for many 
years after he went to London, he insisted on having his 
clothes made by a Dumfries tailor, I made inquiry after him 
of a self-contained old burgher, who was said to know very 
much about everybody, who, after searching himself profound- 
ly for a little, conjectured it must have been old Pattison, 
and sent his son with me to an ancient shop, where we found 
'* Sartor Resartus" in the person of an offshoot of the earlier 
Pattison of the Carlyle epoch. My guide, in a shamefaced 
sort of way, like one engaged in what he thought small busi- 
ness, stated that here was a gentleman to ask if this might be 
the shop where Mr. Carlyle got his clothes. The younger 
Pattison, vainly ruminating, asked what Carlyle. " The one 
they call the philosopher," said my guide. The obliging 
tailor, having no recollection of his own about the matter, 
carefully consulted the index to his ledger, still to no purpose, 
and saying it might be on the old one, drew it forth and went 
over its index, all in vain. When I had asked him how far 
back that ledger went and got for reply, 1765, I concluded 
that Carlyle had not placed his orders there. 

But this is pre-eminently the land of Burns, and all along 
the coast, from the sands of Solway to the Clyde, he reigns 
lord paramount. Dumfries is the chief town in southwest 
Scotland, with a population of 17,000. There stands in the 
square a life-like statue of Burns in white marble. The house 
where he died in 1796, and where his widow, ' ' My bonny Jean," 
lived until her death in 1834, is in a narrow and rather poor 



The House where Burns Died. 29 

street, now called Burns Street. It has a respectable front of 
two stories high, and perhaps 30 feet wide. Hawthorne 
speaks of the meanness of the surroundings, but when one 
considers that the town a hundred years ago was poorly built, 
that the better residences were mingled with the poorer, and 
that the character of the neighborhood has changed in so long 
a time, I think that it may be concluded that Burns was 
housed here in Dumfries in a style above the average. In the 
churchyard of St. Michael, the Presbyterian church near 
where he lived, he lies buried in an elaborate and costly tomb 
of white marble, enclosed in handsome grounds carefully 
tended. Visitors are admitted on the payment of twopence 
into an ample room over the vault, where some fifteen years 
ago the last of his race was placed and the vault finally sealed. 
The wall of this room, fronting the entrance, is occupied by 
the beautiful sculpture in white marble of the Genius of Poesy 
finding Burns at the plough. The figures are largely chiselled 
in high relief, and the conception and execution are grandly 
impressive. 

The old Globe Hotel is entered through a narrow passage 
between high stone walls, and there is shown a snug little 
room on the left of the passage where the poet used to grow 
cheerful with his convivial comrades. It has an exceedingly 
cosey look in the half light from the one window looking on 
the narrow passage, with its wainscoted walls, low ceiling and 
neat fireplace, and I should not find it difficult, with two or 
three transatlantic friends I could name, to grow into so com- 
fortable a frame of mind as to excuse the hilarious evenings 
the bard passed here. The chair he used, of good, solid ma- 
hogany, is shown, but kept under lock and key, as is the 
pretty china punch-bowl, holding near a gallon, with a neat, 
fiowery band about it, an inch below the top. This bowl has 
been, and is, much sought after, and the old landlady in her 
time refused a hundred guineas for it, and her son after her, 
not long ago, five hundred, it is said. In a snug chamber 
just over this room are two panes of glass, 7 by 9, in the 
heavy frames of the window, kept with almost equal care, for 
on them Burns wrote with a diamond these lines, one on 
each : 

" O lovely Polly Stewart, 
O charming Polly Stewart, 



30 Some Objects of Interest in Dumfries. 

There's no a flower that blooms in May 
That's half so fair as thou art. ' 

" Gin a body meet a body 
Coming thro' the grain, 
Gin a body kiss a body, 
The thing's a body's ain." 

There are quite a number of objects of interest in and about 
Dumfries. The New Greyfriars' Church occupies the site of 
the old castle close by the Greyfriars' Monastery, in the church 
of which Bruce slew the Red Comyn. Eight miles from the 
town, on the Solway, is Caerlaverock Castle, an old strong- 
hold of the Maxwells. A mile distant, where the Cluden 
joins the Nith, is Includen Abbey, founded by the Benedic- 
tine monks in the twelfth century. Three miles farther up 
the Cluden is the churchyard of Irongray, in which is the 
grave of Helen Walker, the original of Jeanie Deans. On the 
west of the Nith Estuary is Sweetheart Abbey, founded in 
1275 by Devorgilla Balloil, and so named because she had 
her husband's heart buried here in her own tomb. 

Left at 8 p.m. for Ayr, by rail, following the windings of the 
easy flowing Nith, an inconsiderable but pretty stream, its 
softly curved valley green and fair. We saw plainly on our 
right — for at this latitude one sees to read at 9 p.m. — the white 
farm-house of Ellisland, where Burns tried farming to small 
purpose, on through many a little village, with its low, white 
cottages, through Mauchline, the maiden home of Jean 
Armour, where Burns married her, reaching the Station Hotel 
at II P.M. 

May 22. — The Queen's birthday, so that it was not easy to 
get a carriage to the Burns cottage, the shops being closed 
and all forms of business suspended. Drove directly to the 
cottage where Burns was born in 1759, a one-story stone 
house, containing just two rooms, each about 12 feet square. 
In a recess 6 by 4 feet, opening into the kitchen, just large 
enough to admit a bed, the poet first saw the light, and dim 
enough it must have been, for it came only through a deep-set 
window, not a foot square. The rough board dresser, stand- 
ing on the original stone floor against the wall, between this 
recess and the oven beside the fireplace, is the only article of 
furniture remaining in the room, except the spinning-wheel of 
his mother, but there is no change in the room itself, except 



Burns' Cottage and Alloway Kirk. 31 

that a window has since been let into the front wall. On the 
other side of the short, narrow passage is the remaining room, 
now used as a shop for the sale of innumerable articles of 
ornament, finely made of sycamore or plane-tree wood, with 
pretty pictures in great numbers on them, illustrating persons 
and scenes of his poems. I easily touched the ceiling of this 
most humble kitchen with my hand, but certainly I experienced 
in it a tenderer feeling mingled of love and reverence than I can 
possibly do in the stateliest palace in these islands. 

Never rose brighter star from darker cloud, 

Bard of immortal song ! 
Thy fame shall ever brighter grow, while Doon- 

Runs murmuring along. 

To this low dwelling come from all lands where English 
speech is used a prodigious multitude of pilgrims. A register 
is kept, where visitors are asked to enter their names. Many, 
it is likely, do not comply. For instance, of my party of four, 
only two did so. Yet, going back, I found by actual estimate 
only a few short of four thousand names entered during July, 
1888. On one page I saw names from Queensland, Nova 
Scotia, New York and San Francisco. The registering turn- 
stile, through which all who enter the cottage pay twopence 
for the support of the place, showed something over twenty 
thousand visitors last year. The cottage was built by Burns' 
father. There is a handsome hall, founded with Masonic 
honors on the anniversary of his birth in 1847, attached to the 
cottage, both owned by the Burns Monument Trustees. In 
this hall are very numerous mementoes of Burns, many por- 
traits, statuettes, the manuscript of "Tarn o' Shanter," the 
alleged chairs which Tarn and Souter Johnny used in life. In 
one of the glass cases lies a newspaper clipping, containing a 
a charming little poem to Burns, and signed "An American," 
which our cicerone said was written by Colonel Robert Inger- 
soll, who was here not many years ago. A fresh, eager lad, 
who might be a student, was intently copying it. 

A little farther on the highway stands Auld Alloway Kirk 
the scene of the witches' unholy revel. It is a low stone struc- 
ture, 43 by 21 feet, roofless now, the eastern end fronting the 
road, crowned at the peak with a small bell tower, and having 
the old Gothic window, through the ribs and arches of which 
Tarn, attracted by the blaze streaming from the kirk, saw the 



32 Burns'' Monicrnent. 

witches merrily footing it to the bagpipe of "Auld Nick." 
The original of Tarn o' Shanter was a farmer named Douglas 
Grahame, living, and now buried at Kirkoswald, thirteen miles 
from Ayr. Souter Johnny, his "ancient, trusty, drouthy 
crony," was John Laughlin, a shoemaker of Ayr, who lies 
buried, with a small, plain stone at his head, in the church- 
yard of " Auld Alloway." At the time Burns wrote Tarn 
o' Shanter, in 1790, the interior space of the church was un- 
obstructed, but sixty years ago a partition wall was built one 
third of the distance back from the eastern end, and in the 
western part there are now several tombs. 

We follow the road down to the ancient stone bridge, only 
a few rods distant, and leaning over the parapet, look down 
on the softly flowing Doon, here about 60 feet wide, its braes 
and banks extending up and down in the tender green of 
spring, dotted with daisies and musical with birds. On a 
knoll opposite the entrance to the bridge stands, in well- 
planted and richly cultivated grounds, kept with strict care, 
an imposing monument to Burns, 60 feet high, a not quite 
pleasing structure, in which there is an attempt to blend 
Grecian and Roman architecture, a range of nine Corinthian 
pillars, surmounted by a dome, built in 1820. It owes its ex- 
istence to the efforts of the late Sir Alexander Boswell of 
Auchinloch, a direct descendant, I believe, of Johnson's Bos- 
well. Within the monument is a bust of Burns by the cele- 
brated Scotch sculptor Park, the features of which show more 
delicacy than any of the great number I have seen. Pre- 
served here are the two volumes of the Bible presented by the 
poet to Highland Mary, their inscriptions quite legible, and a 
slender lock of her hair, faded a good deal, but with a slight 
golden glow still remaining. In a grotto within the grounds 
are the life-size and striking statues of Tam o' Shanter and 
Souter Johnny, cut in white marble by Thom. They are 
seated over their cups, and one feels they might well have 
been the men here portrayed. 

This neighborhood has become a show-place to an almost 
unpleasant extent, and the good citizens are working Burns' 
name and fame for all there is in them. The way to the " auld 
brig" is tormented with whining beggars. A dirty fiddler 
stood at the very entrance scraping tunes out of his wretched 
catgut, and on the very "keystane of the brig" stood a hungry 



Call at the Tarn o' Shantcr Inn. 33 

creature, fiercely intent on reciting its history. These things 
jar harshly on the feelings of those who would fain find here 
the pastoral simplicity of the poet's pictures. The pilgrims to 
these scenes, attracted by love of Burns, must leave in the city 
of Ayr, by an easy estimate, in various expenses, more than 
one hundred thousand dollars annually, an amount increasing 
year by year. One tenth of it would have assuaged the poet's 
poverty, lifted him from the black depths of life-long misery, 
and perhaps have saved him from the wild courses he often 
ran in his despairing moods. 

We drove back to the town by a different road, crossing the 
Ayr on the new bridge, built to replace the "new brig" of the 
poem, the old one still standing picturesquely, as the poet pre- 
dicted it would do. This " auld brig" was builded in the 
early part of the thirteenth century by two maiden sisters, who 
devoted their whole fortune to it. It is narrow, " where twa 
wheelbarrows tremble when they meet," and is only used by 
foot-passengers. Called at the Tarn o' Shanter Inn, the iden- 
tical little stone tavern where Tam and Johnny sat 

" . . . . glorious, 
O'er all the ills of life victorious," 

the night of Tam's memorable ride. They show a little wooden 
cup, or " quaich," now hooped with silver, said to be the one 
Burns used to drink his usquebaugh from in the poor cham- 
ber above. I asked the lad in attendance behind a shabby 
bar what sort of liquor he supposed Burns drank, who replied 
with a grin, " Amaist ony he could get." I ordered a tooth- 
ful of his best put into the cup, and sought to drink it with 
reverent thoughts. Tam was wise in sticking to his " ream- 
ing swats." Had he sat the evening through over this special 
"John Barleycorn," he would never have tried to cross the 
bridge. 

Ayr is an old, solid seaport town of 20,000 inhabitants, with 
a good trade in coal. Almost all the coal used in Ireland is 
from Scotland. 

May 23. — Left for Glasgow by rail, distant forty miles, one 
hundred from Dumfries, reaching the Station Hotel at 11 a.m. 
These station hotels are built and owned by the railroad com- 
panies, and are far the best in their appointments, we find. A 
gentleman at Ayr told me he had been familiar with this 
3 



34 Glasgow and its Cathedral. 

coast for many years, and that he never saw the country look- 
ing so thoroughly well and handsome as now, vegetation not 
only here, but in all parts of Scotland, being as forward as is 
usual in the latter part of June. The weather is regarded by 
the people as very warm, and the Edinburgh Scotsman com- 
ments on the great heat of the day before yesterday, when the 
mercury touched 74° ! 

Glasgow is the second city in the kingdom, with a popula- 
tion, including the suburbs, of 750,000, solidly built of stone 
and wearing a look of great prosperity. It has many fine 
public buildings, but everything is dingy with the smoke from 
soft coal. Its manufactories are very extensive, its shipping 
trade enormous, and in ship-building it outranks any city in 
the world. But the bustling spirit of the modern banishes the 
romance of the olden time, and there is not much to detain 
the tourist intent upon the past. The old Salt Market is swept 
away, the house of good Bailie Nicol Jarvie, standing until 
lately, is demolished, and the street of the Trongate modern- 
ized out of its old fashion. 

Took a long drive about the city, visiting the principal 
points. All shops are closed and all business suspended to 
keep the Queen's birthday, as was the case in Ayr yesterday. 
The real day is to-morrow, but it seems that the different 
towns celebrate it on such near days as they find most con- 
venient. 

May 24. — Visited the Cathedral, standing on the highest 
point in the city. It dates from the twelfth century, with por- 
tions in the fourteenth. It is 320 feet long, 70 feet wide and 
90 feet high ; its tower is 220 feet in height. The windows 
throughout are filled with modern stained glass from Munich, 
at a cost of one hundred thousand pounds. It ceased to be a 
cathedral at the era of the Reformation, and the choir is now 
used as one of the city churches. The most interesting por- 
tion is the crypt under the choir, which is really a lower church 
formed on the sloping ground under a portion of the Cathe- 
dral irself. It is supported by sixty-five pillars and lit by forty- 
one windows. The clustered columns are graceful and sym- 
metrical, with exquisite sculptured capitals and bosses in the 
groined vaulting, all thoroughly well preserved. Edward 
Irving, the founder of the sect of Irvingites, and early friend 
of Carlyle, is buried here. In this crypt, then called the 



Dumbarton Castle. 35 

** Laigh (low) Kirk," Scott placed the scene of Rob Roy's 
mysterious warning to Francis Osbaldistone. The Cathedral 
is surrounded by a churchyard, and among the monuments is 
a memorial tablet to nine persons who suffered martyrdom in 
1666 for adhering to the Covenant. A rude stanza in the in- 
scription concludes, 

"They'll know at resurrection day, 
To murder saints was no sweet play." 

May 25. — Left Glasgow 11 a.m. by rail for Balloch, twenty- 
one miles, situated on the south or lower end of Loch Lomond. 
At Dumbarton had a good view of the castle of that name on 
its steep, rocky hill, 280 feet high. This is one of the four 
castles secured to Scotland at the time of the Union. Wallace 
was imprisoned here. Queen Mary, on her way to France to 
be educated at the French court, embarked here in March, 
1548. The towm of Dumbarton lies at the mouth of the river 
Leven, through which Loch Lomond empties its waters into 
the Clyde. The Leven flows deeply and silently, brimming 
its level, grassy banks. Smollett, the novelist, was born in 
this neighborhood in 1721. 

At Balloch we take a small side-wheel steamer and proceed 
. the whole length of Loch Lomond, twenty-two miles, to 
Inversnaid, where coach is taken to cross the ridge between 
this lake and Loch Katrine. The scenes which successively 
present themselves to view during the passage up the lake are 
of exceeding and memorable beauty, and I may not attempt 
their description. As at Killarney, the effect is produced by 
a felicitous union of the agreeable and impressive features of 
natural scenery, each striking in itself and all blending in har- 
mony of form and color, in large and charming variety. At 
its southern end the Loch is five miles broad, but gradually 
narrows to a few hundred yards at its northern or upper end. 
It lies for its entire length between ranges of gradual hills, 
from which mountain-peaks rise abruptly ; it is studded fre- 
quently with little islands of beautiful forms and foliage ; it is 
indented with many gentle capes and bold headlands, and 
pushes itself laughingly into sullen recesses of the mountains 
and bays of the foot-hills, all its shores and the region, far and 
near, famous in history, tradition, story and song. 

Soon after leaving the pier we pass on the left Glen Fruin, 



36 Loch Lomond. 

overhung with the ruins of Bannchara Castle, the residence, in 
the old time, of the Colquhouns. The name Glen Fruin 
means sorrow, and here was a sharp battle between the 
McGregors and the Colquhouns, wherein the latter were ter- 
ribly defeated. We pass the isle of Inch Murrin, preserved as 
a deer-park by the Duke of Montrose, who owns the land on 
both sides the lake for its entire extent, including its islands. 
On the south end of Inch Murrin are the ruins of Lennox, once 
a residence of the earl of that name. We pass the isle of 
Inch Cailliacli, on which is the burial-ground of the McGregors. 
Here on the eastern shore, in the vale of Endrick, is Buchanan 
House, the chief seat of the Duke of Montrose. He is of the 
famous old family of that name which figures all along in 
Scottish history. Farther on, we sail by the mouth of a nar- 
row pass on the east shore, Balmaha, through which the High- 
landers used to go down into the lowlands on forays. In ad- 
vance on our right is Ben Lomond, rising in stately view to 
the height of 3200 feet, until we reach Inversnaid, where we 
leave the steamer to go by coach across to Loch Katrine. On 
the west side of the Loch, here grown narrow, rises Ben Vor- 
lich, 3000 feet, surrounded by many peaks of lesser note, all 
celebrated in song and story. These Scottish mountains differ 
from ours in the respect that the various peaks are more dis- 
tinctly and sharply separated down to their bases, and so pre- 
sent a greater individuality and character. Only the little 
islands in the Loch and the narrow strip of land between the 
hills and shore are wooded ; the hills themselves have not a 
single tree or shrub, but are covered to their summits with 
short grass and heather, the latter now dark, but when in 
flower in August lying in great purple patches all over the 
hills. The ride over the divide between Lomond and Katrine 
is about five miles, the ascent being quite sharp. There is 
tolerable pasture of short, sweet grass all the way, and we 
saw many of the Highland sheep, large and handsome, not 
yet shorn of their heavy fleeces of long, straight, coarse wool. 
They have black noses and black rings around the eyes, and 
the hinder part of their shanks is black also. 

After descending a little way, the fair water of Loch Katrine 
gleamed on our sight through its protecting hills. We are 
now, and have been all day, within the enchanted circle of the 
great wizard, Walter Scott, whose sway over these mountains 



Loch Katrine. 37 

is as absolute as that of Burns on the Ayrshire coast. "The 
Lady of the Lake" will almost serve for a guide-book here, 
and it is interesting to note the fidelity with which Scott has 
located his scenes. By a sharp descent we come down to 
Stronachlacher, a bright hotel on the west shore of the lake, 
near its head, and after lunching there, step on board the snug 
little screw-steamer, " Lady of the Lake," and sail down the 
full length of the lake, nine and one half miles. 

If we were not just from Loch Lomond, we would think 
Katrine the prettiest of all the lakes we have seen. Until we 
approach the eastern end the shores are not so striking on 
either hand as those of Lomond. Then the scene becomes of 
exceeding beauty and grandeur. On the right rises the noble 
form of Ben Venue, 2400 feet, with its deep vertical gash, 
called Coirnan-Urisken, a remarkable specimen of the High- 
land corrie, piled with rocky debris, where Scott located the 
dread Goblin's Cave. Opposite is the cragy peak of Ben A'an, 
and between, Ellen's Isle, hidden to the water's edge by a lux- 
uriant growth of trees and shrubbery, within the verdant 
screen of which we may well imagine the open glade with 
space enough for all the purposes it is required to serve in the 
poem. The little steamer makes a circuit of the isle, and 
while it is evident that Malcolm would have no very long 
swim to reach the shore, nor the fair Ellen be compelled to 
over-exert herself to guide her "light shallop" to it from the 
silvery beach where she took on board Snowdoun's knight, 
still all these distances and conditions are quite sufficient, and 
the lovers of the poem — and who is not ? — need have no fear 
of lessening their admiration by visiting its scenes. 

The city of Glasgow, thirty-six miles distant, takes its 
supply of water from Loch Katrine, carrying it over its moun- 
tainous rim. At the head of the lake we take coach for Aber- 
foyle, passing through the Trossachs, a mountain defile, 
through which the Teith, draining Loch Katrine, finds its 
way to the Forth near Stirling. The Trossachs do not realize 
my expectations, are only moderately impressive, not equalling 
in sublimity the "Gulf" below Proctorsville, in the town of 
Cavendish, Vt. They are really a well-wooded valley, with 
little of the sternness and grandeur I had presupposed. But 
there is sufficient to afford material for genius to shape into 
poetic forms, and with pardonable exaggeration body forth 



38 Clachan of Aberfoyle. 

" the Trossachs' rugged jaws." We skirt the southern shore of 
beautiful little Loch Achray soon after emerging from the 
pass, of which the aged minstrel Allan took his parting look 
from the eastern side of Ben Venue. 

" Where shall he find in foreign land ' 

So lone a lake, so sweet a strand ?" 

Exquisite is the view on this perfect day as we climb the 
hilly range separating the valley of the Teith from that of the 
Forth, Ben Ledi in the background, with softer slopes and 
gentle glens and narrow green fringes of pasture and meadow, 
extending far down to Loch Vennachar, with a dim view of 
the Brig of Turk, the meadow of Coilantogle Ford and Lanrick 
Mead. Anhour's winding in and out, up and down the ridge, 
always grass-grown, brings us in full view of the broad valley 
of the Forth, and we descend sharply from the shoulder of 
Craigmore on the old clachan of Aberfoyle at the foot of the 
comb and on the north bank of the Forth, here of small size. 
A modern hotel stands on the site of the old inn celebrated 
in " Rob Roy" as the scene of the encounter between Francis 
Osbaldistone and the Highlander, where honest Bailie Nicol 
Jarvie intervened so effectually with his red-hot poker, as is 
duly shown on the swinging signboard and in pictures on the 
cover of the wine list of this Bailie Nicol Jarvie Hotel, where 
we dined, waiting for the train to Stirling. 

After dinner strolled out to an old stone bridge over the 
Forth, and not many times hereafter can we hope to look 
upon a more enchanting scene than lay extended up its valley 
to the west. The sun was nearing its setting, flooding the crest 
of Ben Lomond and all the lesser heights about him with 
purple light, and touching with peculiar softness the broad, 
verdant meadows of the tranquil, winding stream, the whole 
vista refined and withdrawn into the unreal domain of fairy- 
land by the violet flush half screening the outlines of hills 
bordering the long-drawn vale on either hand. 

Took train at 7.30 p.m. for Stirling, and after a ride of an 
hour are gathered, at the close of another day worthy of 
marking with a white stone, within the portals of the Golden 
Lion, whose gilded effigy crouches above it, wearing that 
grim smile attributed in heraldry to the king of beasts. At 
9.30 one easily reads a book by daylight. 



A Walk Round Stirling Castle. 89 

May 26, Siniday. — My family attended services in the " Free 
Church," while I strolled up the steep streets of the old town, 
standing on the sloping side of the crag on whose abrupt 
edge the castle towers 340 feet above the wide valley of the 
Forth, here greatly broadened, having received the waters of 
the Teith some miles above. 

We passed yesterday, but did not visit, the Lake of Monteith, 
with its Isle of Rest — Inchmahone — on which are the remains 
of the monastic pile where Princess Mary, afterward Queen 
of Scots, was conveyed after the battle of Pinkie, to seclude 
her from the " rough wooing" of Henry VIII. in behalf of his 
son Edward, and where she lived some time with her four 
Marys — Mary Beaton, Mary Seaton, Mary Livingston and Mary 
Fleming. I took the walk called the Back Walk, which winds 
entirely round the castle half way up the crag on which it 
rests, made with a deal of labor by excavating the abrupt 
sides of the crag. The view up the luxuriant valley of the 
Forth is exceedingly beautiful. On the south side, far below, 
lies the " King's Garden," with its turfy embankments. In 
the centre is a raised octagonal space, flat at top, where the 
monarch, James V., and his courtiers engaged in the amuse- 
ment of the Round Table, which perhaps consisted in person- 
ating the fabulous King Arthur and his court. Alleys, banks 
and all are covered with rich turf. This garden is said to 
have been restored early in this century from a plan of the 
original found in the castle, and as often as its outlines 
become effaced they are renewed by the town authorities. 

After dinner at four o'clock, served at that early hour, as 
the housekeeper said, to give all a Sunday rest — we are now 
among the grim descendants of the Covenanters — I took the 
young people on the same walk I had made in the morning. 
A detachment of the Salvation Army has greatly infested these 
narrow, steep streets since last evening, and with red banner, 
and with wilder and fuller-throated tunes than I have hereto- 
fore heard, are almost picturesque. But they seem to get as 
little attention here as at home. 

May 27. — Engaged a landau and pair for a full day. Had 
an excellent, well-informed driver. Rode up the steep street 
leading to the entrance of the castle, alighted, passed the 
sentinel, and engaged for guide, as requested, an army pen- 
sioner, who did not look over fifty, although he stated he had 



40 Stij'ling Castle. 

served forty-five years. The castle covers a large area, and 
its various buildings are now used for military purposes, and 
but few rooms are open to the public. The most interesting 
exterior is that of the palace built by James V., its walls rich 
with sculpture. Entrance is given to what is called the 
Douglas Room, a small, low chamber, some ten feet from the 
ground, where James II. stabbed William, Earl of Douglas, in 
a fit of passion, in 1452, because he would not consent to 
submit to his authority. This room adjoins a still smaller 
one, from the window of which the body of the murdered earl 
was thrown. It had been supposed that he was buried where 
he fell, and in 1797 some masons, making an excavation there, 
found a human skeleton, believed to be that of the Douglas. 
Queen Victoria has filled the little window above the spot 
with illuminated glass, containing the Douglas arms, a bleed- 
ing heart. From that part of the ramparts styled the 
" Queen's Look-out," since Queen Victoria visited the castle, 
is a most magnificent view, including that part of the valley 
of the Forth we traversed from Aberfoyle and still farther 
westward, taking in the vale of Monteith, and bounded by Ben 
Lomond to the extreme left ; then, rising in due order to the 
right, Ben Venue, Ben A'an, Ben Ledi, the cone of Ben 
Vorlich, Uamvar, the Ochil Hills to the north and east and 
the Campsie Hills to the south ; Sanchieburn, where James III, 
was defeated by his insurgent nobles in 1488, the house near 
by still standing where he was assassinated the day after the 
battle ; to the north the field of Stirling, where Wallace gained 
his first victory over the English in 1297, and farther on, the 
upland slope of Sheriff Muir, the scene of the battle between 
the Earl of Mar for the Pretender and the English forces 
under the Duke of Argyle, in 1715. On a rough piece of 
ground on the crag, but outside the castle walls, still stands 
the " Beheading Stone," where many a noble and fair head 
fell under the headsman's axe. Underneath the wall on the 
northeast of the castle, a very narrow passage, walled high on 
both sides, leads steeply down to the level, called from old 
time Ballangeich, which James II. was wont to take when 
going out in disguise for purposes of business or gallantry. 

As all know, this castle of Stirling has played a most im- 
portant part in Scottish history from the earliest time. It is 
said that the date of its building and its earliest history are 



Argyles Lodging and '■^Mars Work.''^ 41 

unknown, because Cromwell carried away its records, and 
when he sent them back at a later period, they were lost at 
sea. It was a fortress in 1124, and was taken by Edward I. of 
England in 1304. It withstood siege for three months, and as 
there were no cannon then, the king called on all knights to 
join his large army, and it was found necessary to bring from 
London Tower all the besieging implements then known. 
One of these, called the "Wolf," effected a breach, the castle' 
was taken and held by the English ten years, and so impor- 
tant was it considered that Edward II. brought a great army 
to maintain it, and in the end was defeated by Bruce under 
its walls at Bannockburn. It became a royal residence with 
the accession of the house of Stuart to the Scottish throne. 
James II. and James V. were born here, and the latter crowned 
here, and James VI. and his son Henry were baptized here. 
These are trite facts, old and musty, but they are rehabilitated 
in new flesh as one looks upon the scenes themselves with 
living eye. They bring back to me the time when in the 
wilds of the new West I pored over the " Tales of a Grand- 
father," and dreamed of the plumed Wallace and the Black 
Douglas. 

In a steep, narrow street near the castle stands a fine house 
called Argyle's Lodging, now used as a hospital, wjth pinna- 
cled round-towers and finely decorated windows. It belonged 
to William Alexander, the poet, created Earl of Stirling by 
Charles I., the same who obtained the grant of Nova Scotia. 
In 1640 it came to the Argyle family, whose arms are sculp- 
tured over the doors and windows. It was the headquarters 
of John, Duke of Argyle, during the rebellion of 17 15. 

An exceedingly interesting front of an unfinished house, 
with its sculptured doors and windows and numerous grotesque 
gargoyles, in an adjoining street near by, is the one called 
" Mar's Work," begun by the Earl of Mar and left unfinished ; 
for, having plotted the death of Queen Mary, he lost his head 
at Stirling in 1572. Before the castle entrance stands a statue 
of Robert Bruce, of heroic size, erected in 1877, its face turned 
toward Bannockburn, whither we also went directly. A 
little burn runs winding through a slightly undulating stretch 
of plain, with no memorial of the foughten field except a rock 
almost buried in the earth called the " Bore Stone," in the top 
of which is a jagged, circular hole, in which the royal stand- 



43 Doune and its Old Castle. 

ard is said to have been set. This stone is now covered with 
an iron grating to save it from relic-hunters. A mile away is 
an eminence called '' Gillies Hill," behind which Bruce had 
stationed his camp-followers, who, showing themselves at a 
critical moment, threw the English into a panic, and gave the 
Scotch the victory. On the way our driver pointed to a snug 
suburban residence, where he said General Grant lunched with 
the Provost when he visited Stirling. 

Drove back to the northeast of the town to the ruins of 
Cambus-Kenneth Abbey, founded in 1147 by David I., and 
said to be one of the richest in Scotland, whereof only the 
square massive Norman tower remains. Here the Lady of the 
Lake was left by her father, the Douglas, when he went to 
Stirling to make his peace with the king. On a crag rising 
from the plain, just as that of Stirling does, but to the greater 
height of 560 feet, the sides clothed with sylvan verdure, is a 
recently erected monument to Wallace, 220 feet high, in the 
form of a baronial tower, most unpleasing to my eyes. Wal- 
lace's sword is kept here — a huge blade over six feet long, well 
adapted to lopping off heads, which was the steady employ- 
ment of all heroes in the good old days. We crossed the 
Forth on the old bridge of Stirling, in perfect preservation, 
though built in the fifteenth century, and for a long time the 
only bridge over the Forth or Tay, and so the only gate 
between the north and south of Scotland. Archbishop 
Hamilton was hanged on this bridge for his share in the mur- 
der of the regent Moray in 1570, from which we conclude that 
masons did good work in those early times, and archbishops 
engaged in murders and got "stretched " for them — sometimes. 

After lunch drove to Doune to visit the castle there, eight 
miles from Stirling, crossing the Forth and going through the 
beautiful grounds of Blair Drummond, a seat of G. Stirling 
Home Drummond Moray, Esq., enriched with magnificent 
oaks and beeches standing singly in the miles of park, and cast- 
ing a vast circumference of shade on the velvet sward. We 
cross a noble bridge over the Teith, built in 1535 by Robert 
Spital, tailor to the Most Noble Princess Margaret, the queen 
of James IV., as an inscription on the parapet declares, where 
the worthy tailor, with the heart of nine, boldly chiselled his 
arms, a pair of scissors en saltier. 

Half a mile below, on a peninsula formed by the union of the 



^^ Keek into the Draw-wcil, Janet." 43 

Ardoch Burn with the Teith, stands the majestic ruin of the 
old castle of Doune, with its two square towers, turrets, and 
high embattled walls, its spiral staircase, dungeons, and battle- 
ments, from which exquisite views are obtained up the Teith, 
whose slender waters glide softly between high banks dusky 
with the shades of low, overhanging trees, and verdant with 
fliower-strown turf. The court-yard is loo feet square, and in 
the centre is the old draw-well, 60 feet deep, which supplied 
the inmates with water, cold and sparkling, of which we drank. 
The site of the well was discovered only a few years ago, and 
it was recurbed to the depth of 40 feet, the curbing below that 
depth being in good condition. At the bottom was found the 
old oaken windlass, well preserved, and now shown in one of 
the upper rooms. The castle has long been the property of 
the Moray family, and lately two of the rooms have been re- 
stored in good taste. One of these is the dining-room, on the 
second story of one of the quadrangles, and a fine old mas- 
sive hall it was and is. The kitchen has a famous fireplace, 
15 feet across the front, where a whole ox could easily 
have been roasted, with an enormous chimney, still black with 
the fires that roared up its throat centuries ago. The castle 
dates back to the time of James I., 1436, who occupied it. It 
is supposed that Scott's Knight of Snowdoun, James Fitz- 
James, slept here the night before he set out for the chase, and 
the castle also figures in Scott's novel of "Waverley. " John 
Horne, the author of the play "Douglas," was taken prisoner 
at the battle of Falkirk by the Royalists and confined here, 
and the room is shown from the window of which he let him- 
self down by tying his bedclothes together — some 60 feet, I 
should say. The custodian of the castle is a certain James 
Dunbar, formerly of the 79th Cameron Highlanders, and pos- 
sessed of a gift of gab exceeding anything ever known, I am 
sure, in that windy vein. He has written a book on the castle, 
bound in wooden covers made from the Hangman's Tree, once 
standing just outside the walls. Noticing that it seemed less 
in volume than his talk would certainly be, I purchased a copy, 
and hurried away to the quaint and pretty village of Dunblane, 
on our way back to Stirling, to see the Cathedral there, said 
to rival in the beauty of its proportions that of Melrose Abbey, 
and to be one of the few specimens of Gothic architecture 
which to a great extent escaped the destruction of the Refor- 



44 Dunblane. — Edinburgh. 

mation period. There is a beautiful little window in the west- 
ern gable in the shape of a forest-leaf, and the doorway and 
the arches of the clerestory are exquisitely formed and shaft- 
ed, and filled with foliated work. It dates back to iioo. The 
carved and canopied stalls of oak, black with age, are still 
preserved in the choir, now used for Presbyterian worship. 
There, too, lie side by side the effigies of the Earl and Coui~- 
tess of Strathearn, as they have lain since 127 1, something the 
worse for wear, time or man having bereft the fair countess 
of her head, and nipped away the nose of her stout liege. 
Noses seem to be lacking always from these effigies ; and 
they carried them so high in air, too, when in the flesh ! 

We cross the river Allan, a little stream rising in the Ochil 
Hills, and joining the Forth just below. The village, Bridge 
of Allan, has fame as a health resort from its sheltered posi- 
tion, but chiefly from some mineral springs. Rode entirely 
round the castle on a level with the plain. Perched on this 
beetling crag at such a dizzy height, commanding in wide 
sweep as fair scenes as I have looked upon, this castle of Stir- 
ling fulfils my ideal. The castle rock is greenstone trap, the 
same formation as the Palisades of the Hudson. Dined at 
the Golden Lion, and left at 9 p.m. for Edinburgh, thirty-six 
miles distant, and are well cared for at the Royal Hotel, where 
we found awaiting us our heavy luggage, which had come for- 
ward directly from Glasgow on Saturday. 

May 28. — We could not have desired better weather than 
we have enjoyed ever since landing at Queenstown. With 
the exception of one rainy day at Cork, we have had no foul 
weather to hinder or even incommode us. Experienced friends 
insisted we were a month too early for the Highlands, and 
that we should be frozen and drenched, and that the fogs and 
mists would hide everything from us, and fieMs and trees be 
bare. In fact, we have needed only light wraps — linen dusters 
would have suited better than mackintoshes — not a day of 
mist or fog, the whole land smiling in the flowery verdure of 
forest, meadow and hill. This morning there is rain, but in a 
cosey private parlor with a bay-window, giving a view up and 
down Prince Street and across the fair borders of. the ravine 
separating the old from the new town, of the stately buildings 
crowning the opposite ridge, of the imposing monument to 
Walter Scott just at the left, and the classical buildings of the 



A General Vietv of the City. 45 

Museum and National Gallery on the right, and with just a 
glimmer of fire on the hearth and a fresh budget of letters 
from home, we pass a cheerful morning, despite a shifting 
mist, which does its best to screen us in. 

After luncheon, the clouds having lifted, we engaged the 
much-to-be-commended Frazer, with his "best horse in Edin- 
burgh," and a snug little landau to take us for a general view 
of the city ; and a fair city it is too, with its wide and regu- 
lar streets, its handsome and solid houses, its frequent bits of 
parks, well kept and enriched with fine monuments and statues. 
Many of these small parks are circular, and the streets and 
houses about them conform. The night did not become fully 
dark until nearly eleven o'clock, and happening to awake at 
two in the morning, I found it daylight. 

May 29. — Frazer came up and took us to drive across the 
ravine — in the lower part of which run railway-tracks — up into 
the old town and into High Street, which extends steeply 
down in a straight line from the castle to Holyrood Palace, 
but taking along its course the names of Castle Hill, Lawn- 
market, High Street, Netherbo, and the famous Canongate. 
Many old houses still stand in a dilapidated state on this street, 
once occupied by rank and fashion in the days of the Stuarts. 
Beginning at the castle, that nearest to it was the mansion of 
the Duke of Gordon, still bearing his carved ducal coronet, 
and having in its gable a cannon-ball said to have been shot 
from the castle in 1745. Just below the esplanade to the left 
is a lane leading to the house of the poet, Allan Ramsay, author 
of the "Gentle Shepherd," who died here in 1758. Passing 
along down on the right is the General Assembly Hall of the 
Church of Scotland, which held its first annual session in 1560. 
May is the month, and it is now holding daily meetings in this 
handsome Gothic building, with its tapering spire of 241 feet. 
The Queen is represented at these meetings by a peer ap- 
pointed for the purpose, who is styled the Lord High Com- 
missioner, and occupies a seat in what is called the throne 
gallery. A little farther down on the north side of the street, 
here called the Lawnmarket, is James' Court, where David 
Hume lived and Boswell, who brought Johnson here before 
they set out for their tour to the Hebrides in 1773. Near this is 
Lady Stair's Close, named after Elizabeth, Dowager Countess 
of Stair, whose singular history forms the groundwork of Scott's 



46 John Knoxs House. 

story of " My Aunt Margaret's Mirror." Over the doorway 
is the inscription, " Fear the Lord and depart from evil ; 1622." 
The Close adjoining, called Baxter's, contains the lodging 
first occupied by Burns when here in 1786. Then we reach, 
still in High Street, St. Giles' Cathedral, or the old Parish 
Church of Edinburgh, named for St. Giles, the patron saint 
of the city. This we do not visit to-day. At the northwest 
corner of it once stood the Old Tolbooth jail — the Heart of 
Midlothian — made world-famous by Scott's novel of that name. 
The site is indicated by the figure of a heart in the causeway. 
In the little square here was once a churchyard, where John 
Knox lies buried, his grave marked by a small stone near the 
equestrian statue of Charles H., and inscribed "J. K., 1572." 
This statue of Charles is in lead, and erected at the expense 
of the city in 1680. He is shown in Roman garb, but the 
weak, sinister face shows poorly above the dignified toga. 
On the east of the little square stands the old original Market- 
Cross, a shaft topped by the heraldic unicorn on a restored 
base, the latter the gift of the Hon. W. E. Gladstone, four 
years since. The old Parliament House on the square we do 
not visit to-day, nor the Advocate's Library connected with it. 
Visited John Knox's house a little way down, protruding itself 
into the street. This is the manse where he lived from 1559 
to his death in 1572 while minister of Edinburgh, and an ex- 
ceedingly pleasant and quaintly interesting old house it is, 
with its odd little rooms, handsome old oaken panels, tiled 
fireplaces and many relics. There is a little pent-house thrust 
out over the street with a window looking up it, where he 
might stand and preach to the crowd below. Above the 
entrance-door is the inscription in Old English letters and 
the spelling of the time, 

" Lofe. God. aboune . al .and .yohr . nechtbohr . as .yiself," 

and under the window a rude effigy pointing to the name of 
God carved on a stone above in Greek, Latin and English. 
A little below two new streets come in, made to open up the 
dense mass of old buildings here. On one of these was re- 
placed Trinity College Church, which before stood lower down 
and in the way of the modern improvements. This church was 
founded in 1462 by Mary of Gueldres, wife of James II. The 
stones were numbered in taking them down, so that it is 



Holyrood Palace. 47 

exactly restored. Here begins the Canongate, a narrow street 
going down to the palace of Holyrood. Many of the ancient 
nobility had their residences on either side of it down to the 
palace. A notable one is Moray House, on the south side, the 
mansion of the Earl of Moray, built in 1618 by Mary, Countess 
of Home, eldest daughter of Lord Dudley. On her death in 
1645, goes the record, it fell to one of her daughters, Margaret, 
Countess of Moray, and so became the property of the Moray 
family, and remained in the same until 1835. Oliver Cromwell 
occupied it the first time he visited Edinburgh, both before 
and after the battle of Dunbar, 1648-50, when he established 
friendly relations with the Covenanters, and it is said the 
design of beheading Charles I. was first considered within its 
walls. Soon after the marriage of the Marquis of Lome with 
Lady Mary Stuart, Lord Moray's eldest daughter, took place 
here, and it is related that the wedding party witnessed from 
the balcony the Marquis of Montrose being led to execution. 
Near the Moray House is 13 John Street, where Lord Monboddo 
and the fair Miss Burnet lived. Burns often visited here while 
in Edinburgh, and her early death inspired one of his most 
feeling poems. At No. 10 lived James Ballantyne, Scott's 
publisher — at least he printed the Waverley novels. Smollett 
lived near by. Still farther down stands the Canongate Tol- 
booth, erected in the reign of James VL, an exceedingly inter- 
esting exterior. We did not visit the Canongate Church to- 
day. But time fails to notice all the houses of interest on 
this famous old street. Near the foot on the north side is the 
ancient hostelry of the White Horse, one of the oldest of the 
Edinburgh taverns. Opposite is the Abbey Court House, and 
two lines of darker stone in the pavement mark limits within 
which a debtor could not be molested by his creditors — a sort 
of handy Canada. 

We are now at the open space before Holyrood Palace, dating 
as it is now mainly from 1670. It was originally a convent, 
as the name abbey implies, and dates back to the early part of 
the twelfth century, when King David \. founded and endowed 
the Church of the Holy Rood. After a time, of which the 
records are not complete, other buildings were added for a 
royal residence. The tower and high-roofed buildings, con- 
taining what are now called Queen Mary's apartments, were 
built by James V., as an inscription on them shows. All the 



48 Picture Gallery and Queen Marys Rooms. 

abbey except the church was burned by the English in 1544. 
The whole of the palace, except the double tower and the 
building adjoining containing Queen Mary's apartments, was 
again burned at the close of the civil war. Charles II. built 
the present palace in the form of a quadrangle, with a piazza 
running all around the inner court, a bare space covered with 
gravel. This building does not much interest me. 

In one of the sides of the square is the Picture Gallery, the 
largest apartment of the palace, and the only one in the modern 
portion shown to visitors, the other rooms all around the court 
being occupied by the apartments and offices of one sort and 
another pertaining to a royal residence. This Picture Gallery 
is 120 feet long, and on its plain walls are hung, say, one hun- 
dred portraits of Scottish kings, from Fergus I. to James VII., 
all painted by one artist, De Witt, 1685. The earlier ones, of 
course, have little or no value as portraits, but have, I should 
say, considerable merit as paintings, and the faces are stamped 
with much individuality. Specially interesting are those of 
Mary Queen of Scots and Charles II., the latter strikingly ex- 
pressing the essential meanness of his character. A long table 
is set in this room to-day, and now for several days during the 
session of the General Assembly, to which the present Lord 
High Commissioner, Earl Hopetoun, daily invites a considerable 
number of the delegates for dinner. His lordship and suite were 
just going forth in much state from the palace as we entered, 
in two coaches and four, guided by a postilion in scarlet jacket 
and white breeches on the nigh horse of each pair, enveloped 
in a whirl of cavalry and preceded some paces in advance by 
two troopers with carbines held at "ready." In this hall the 
sixteen members of the peerage of Scotland are elected for 
each Parliament by the Scottish peers themselves, as provided 
by the Treaty of Union. Here, too. Prince Charles Edward 
gave the ball described in "Waverley." Queen Mary's apart- 
ments, in the original portion of the palace, are much in the 
same state as when she last used them. In the audience 
chamber, a room about twenty feet square, stands the bed of 
Charles I., on which Prince Charlie slept in 1745. From this 
opens Queen Mary's bedroom, about fifteen feet square, with 
her bed and many articles of her furniture and toilet. , Here is 
her Venetian mirror, said to be one of the first brought to Scot- 
land, which was wont to reflect her fair face, keeping its beauty 



The Murder of Rizzio. 40 

through her life of suffering ; her work-box, with its cover 
wrought in silken figu res by her own fair fingers, and a touching 
memento in a little willow baby basket — work in willow being 
then new and rare and highly prized — covered with faded, tat- 
tered blue silk, sent to her by Queen Elizabeth for the use of 
the little James, who succeeded her on the throne of England. 
A narrow door opens through the thick wall to a little private 
supper-room, not ten feet square, into which her husband, 
Darnley, with several armed attendants, burst on the evening 
she sat at table with several of her maids of honor and Rizzio. 
They came up from Darnley 's rooms below by a secret passage 
opening into the adjoining bedroom. Our guide's version of 
the murder is somewhat different from the current one. It is 
that they at once proceeded to stab him ; that Mary rushed 
past them into the bedroom, Darnley following and placing 
himself before her while the armed band were dispatching 
Rizzio with repeated stabs ; and when she would have gone 
back to intercede for him, drew his dagger and said, " Madam, 
if you stir a foot I will cut you into coUops" — a statement well 
calculated to keep almost any woman quiet. They dragged 
his bleeding body through the audience-chamber and left it 
at the head of the stairs leading to the court below, where, on 
the authority of our guide, it lay all night. The guide relates, 
what I think is not to be found elsewhere, that in the morning 
Mary "was quite annoyed" at finding the body there, and 
ordered the dark old oaken partition put up, which now parts 
off a portion of the audience-chamber nearest the stairs, so 
as to shut out the hateful spot. Our guide, too, quite mocks 
at the notion of a stain of blood on the clean, worn floor, and 
he is correct in this, for there is no such spot, as may well be 
supposed. It was a picturesque tragedy : the low-browed 
little room hung with tapestry from the looms of France ; the 
fair faces, the rich robes, the jewels sparkling in the full light 
of the chandeliers, the conspirators filing up the narrow wind- 
ing staircase, pale Ruthven foremost, clad in complete steel, 
the sudden terror, the quick dagger-thrust, the shower of suc- 
ceeding blows — thirty-six stabs in all — the cries of the women^ 
the proud and compassionate anger of the insulted queen. 

The Chapel Royal is a fragment of the ancient abbey of 
Holyrood House, adjoining one side of the quadrangle, dating 
back to 1 1 28, now in ruins by the tooth of time and the relig- 
4 



50 77/1? Funeral of the Earl of Caithness. 

ious frenzy of the Reformers. There is a roofless nave with 
beautifully carved doorway. There are a few tombs of noble 
families on the northern side, and it is a circumstance of in- 
terest to us that we look on a grave newly dug to receive the 
body of the Earl of Caithness, who died here suddenly last 
Saturday at the age of thirty, and will be interred here an 
hour hence — the last burial, it is said, that will be permitted 
in Holyrood. He is the fifteenth earl of the name, was never 
married, and the title now goes to a descendant of the eleventh 
earl. By will he has left his estates to a college friend, on 
condition that he takes the family name of Sinclair. As we 
were about to leave the palace, we were motioned back behind 
a half-drawn curtain, shutting the corridor we were in from 
the main entrance, by a flustered lackey in red livery, whose 
manner indicated some tremendous portent impending, and 
looking out, saw a fellow-mortal in a long black robe holding 
in both hands a mace with a gold head as big as his own, 
who stood facing the entrance, through which marched, in high 
fig of scarlet and gold, my Lord Hopetoun, a well enough 
looking, youngish man, returning from the opening of the 
General Assembly in all the pomp with which we saw him set 
out two hours before. Several functionaries, bareheaded and 
powdered, some in. dresses marking their offices, all the signifi- 
cance of which I am ignorant, walked close about him, as if to 
see that the order of the universe gets no detriment this day. 
I suppose it tickles the dull imaginations of these grim old 
Scotch Presbyterians, whose ancestors brought their Church 
through from the militant to the triumphant condition, to 
have the semblance of royalty attending upon their assemblies, 
with all its feathers on. In the royal vault in the chapel are 
buried, among others of note, David II., James II., James V. 
and Magdalen, his queen ; Henry, Lord Darnley. 

Although I have noted our visit to Knox's house as occur- 
ring before that to the palace, in point of fact it immediately 
followed, and from the window at which the Reformer was 
wont to stand and preach we saw the funeral of the Earl of 
Caithness descending the steep street from St. Giles to Holy- 
rood, with much sad pomp and circumstance. Six black 
horses plumed and caparisoned in sable drew a huge hearse 
in which lay open to view the oaken coffin, followed by his 
piper, with his pipes draped, and the house steward, both on 



The National Museum of Antiquities. 51 

foot, and after, a train of carriages, the foremost conveying 
the male relations and friends who acted as pall-bearers. 
There were no ladies in the train. 

After luncheon visited the National Museum of Antiquities 
in the Royal Institution near the National Gallery, both build- 
ings in the classical style with Grecian porticos, a favorite 
style here, practised largely by the architect Playfair. The 
collection seemed to me of exceeding interest. There has 
been no catalogue for twelve years now. I can attempt almost 
no description of the contents. There is the " Maiden," the 
ancient Scotch beheading machine, consisting of a wide 
blade sliding up and down in grooves and loaded with a stone 
to give it needed force. The victim stooped over and rested 
his neck on the bed of the framework, some three and one 
half feet from the ground. Many noble and fair heads have 
been shorn away by this fatal axe. There are several forms 
of the "Thumbikins" or thumb-screws, the pain from the ap- 
plication of which the matron who has the Knox house in 
charge says is "awfully bitter and goes to the heart." Also 
the " Branks," an iron head-dress with a projection to thrust in 
over the tongue as a punishment for arrant scolds, and an iron 
band with chains and fetters to fasten about the body and se- 
cure the victim to the stake for burning. Here is the blue 
ribbon worn by Prince Charles as a Knight of the Garter in 
1745, and a ring given him at parting by Flora Macdonald, 
and an exceedingly interesting collection of Scottish weapons 
during many centuries. 

May 30. — Visited the castle, standing on a precipitous 
crag of basalt 300 feet above the valley below, and occupying 
almost eight acres of irregular ground. Most of the buildings 
are modern and plain and greatly detract from the effect of 
the view from below, but enough remains of walls and the 
older structures to render the whole extremely grand and pic- 
turesque from whatever point it is viewed. I cannot under- 
take its history, which begins authentically when in 617 
Edwin, King of Northumbria built a fortress on this rock, at the 
foot of which sprang up Edwin's Burgh. It is accessible only 
on the eastern side. We approach by an esplanade, cross a 
drawbridge over a moat which must have been a dry one, as 
there could not have been a supply of water, pass through the 
old portcullis-gate, underneath the ancient State Prison in the 



52 The Crown Room and Queen Mary's Room in the Castle. 

" Argyle Tower," where the Marquis of Argyle and many ad- 
herents of the Stuarts were confined before their execution, 
and note the barred window of the little room where the brave 
marquis passed his last night, the old sally-port leading to the 
town below, St. Margaret's Chapel, the oldest of all the build- 
ings, to the Crown Room, where we are shown the insignia of 
Scottish royalty, the regalia, called also the " Honors of Scot- 
land," consisting of crown, sceptre and the sword of state. 

The history of these crown jewels is interesting, and is told 
at length by Sir Walter Scott. I can only say here that they 
were lost from the knowledge of men from 1707 to 1818, when 
commissioners were appointed to search for them, Scott being 
one. They were found in the very room where they are now 
shown, this room having remained closely shut and neglected 
during this hundred years. The two massive doors, one of 
iron and one of oak, were forced, as was the great oaken chest, 
the only article of furniture in the chamber, and to the great 
joy of the people gathered below, who raised a shout as the 
news of it spread, all the articles were found safe and sound. 
They are of exquisite form and workmanship. With them 
was found the mace of the Lord Treasurer, wrought of solid 
silver. There is also shown a ruby ring set round with dia- 
monds, the coronation ring of Charles I., a large, fine ruby ; 
also a golden collar of the Order of the Garter, presented to 
James VI. by Queen Elizabeth on his being created a Knight 
of the Garter, a fine piece of workmanship. The beautiful 
sword of state was presented to James IV. by Pope Julius II. 
in 1507. 

Adjoining this room, but reached by another entrance from 
the court, is Queen Mary's Room, where she gave birth to 
James VI., commemorated by the initials H. and M. and the 
date 1566 over the doorway. This room has its original ceil- 
ing, with the initials J. R. and M. R. wrought in the panels. 
There is a portrait of Mary of inexpressible sweetness and 
beauty and tenderness, a copy of the one in the Bodleian Li- 
brary at Oxford, the origin of which I would like to know. 
There is still another of a bolder and more coquettish air 
painted by Furino about 1562, when she was Dauphiness, and 
presented by her to Cardinal Lorraine. In this her hair is a 
dark rich auburn. Adjoining is a little room from the win- 
dow of which it is said the infant James was let down in a 



A Drive to Calton Hill. 53 

basket to be conveyed to Stirling for greater security. On 
the bomb battery is the big gun, Mons Meg, now mounted on 
a carriage, and it seems to me a very creditable cannon to 
have been made in 1476, so soon after the discovery of gun- 
powder. It is 13 feet long, 20 inches in diameter and weighs 
five tons. It was forged at Mons, Belgium, of long bars of 
malleable iron held together by bands of the same, these 
bands being continuous, welded perfectly, and the bore smooth 1 
and solid. James IV. used it at the siege of Dumbarton in 
1489 and at that of Norham Castle in 1497. It burst near the 
powder-chamber when firing a salute in honor of the Duke of 
York in 1682. It was drawn about on a wooden carriage by 
an immense number of horses, and could not be elevated or 
depressed, and the surface is so rough that it could not be 
sighted. The balls were huge round stones, several of which 
are lying near by having been picked up in those parts of the 
country where this unwieldy monster deployed its horrors to 
the consternation of bowmen, spearmen and harnessed knights 
as its huge boulders lumbered along their ranks. 

After luncheon the intelligent Frazer took us for a drive in 
his comfortable landau to Calton Hill, 355 feet high, at the 
east end of the New Town, where is the Royal Observatory. 
A time ball-signal here on a flag-staff atop of the ungainly Nel- 
son Monument fires a gun from the castle every day at i p.m. 
A fine view of the city is obtained here. Thence to Arthur's 
Seat which rises up directly from Holyrood 800 feet. An ex- 
cellent road called the " Queen's Drive" goes entirely round 
the upper portion of the hill and commands a wide and beauti- 
ful prospect, embracing the smoky city, the estuary of the 
Forth, the mountains all about and many a fair field and val- 
ley and pleasant wood. We pass the ruins of a little chapel 
on the hill-side — that of St. Anthony — once connected with a 
hermit's cell, below which is a pure and abundant fountain 
dedicated to that saint. These are alluded to in the old ballad, 

" Now Arthur's Seat shall be my bed, 
Saint Anton's well shall be my drink, 
Since my true love's forsaken me." 

Near by on our road is Muschett's Cairn, a pile of stones mark- 
ing the spot where Jeanie Deans held the interview with her 
sister Effie's lover in Scott's "Heart of Midlothian." A por- 



54 A Charming Bit of Country. 

tion of the road is overhung by a range of porphyritic green- 
stone columns of a pentagonal form, from 50 to 60 feet high, 
called " Samson's Ribs," a part of Salisbury Crags, at the foot 
of which was Scott's favorite walk. At the foot of Arthur's 
Seat to the southeast lie Duddingston Loch and village. The 
house where Prince Charles Stuart slept the night before the 
battle of Prestonpans is pointed out, and the red-tiled roof of 
the cottage of Jeanie Deans' father. On the wall of a little 
church in the village near the entrance hangs an adjustable 
ring suspended by a chain the height of a man's neck, used to 
fasten an offender by that member — a sort of stock called 
the " Jougs." About a mile south, the road running across a 
charming bit of country, is Craigmillar Castle, nobly situated 
and well preserved, dating from 1374. It was a favorite resi- 
dence of Queen Mary, and no wonder, for from the battle- 
ments are views fit for a queen's eye by sea and land. It is 
much more commodious and with more abundant living-rooms 
than we have seen in any other castle, and seems to have been 
a sort of strongly fortified summer residence. Mary lay sick 
here, it is said, on the night Darnley was killed by the explo- 
sion in a near suburb of the city, called Kirk o' Field, a spot 
now occupied by the University. 

May 31. — The Morning Leader here has a long article on the 
late Earl of Caithness, whose funeral we witnessed yesterday, 
headed *' Caithness — a Lapsed Earldom. Thrilling Story of 
the Centuries;" and as it illustrates well the past of this coun- 
try, and throws light on the history of those who fill the high 
places, I feel an interest in recording the facts of the case, and 
quoting from this article at some length : 

" Tragedy and romance mingled strangely round the cere- 
mony of the sealing of the tomb at Holyrood, wherein on 
Wednesday were deposited the remains of the Earl of Caith- 
ness. It was the symbol of four hundred years of history 
completed. Yea, more, it seems to have signified that the last 
of the many conspicuous Scotchmen destined to rest within 
the precincts of the venerable Chapel of Holyrood had taken 
his appointed place, and the dust of the dead within these 
tombs will remain undisturbed till the last syllable of recorded 
time. 

"According to the Domesday Book, the estates of the Earl 
of Caithness in Caithness-shire extend to 14,460 acres, and the 



An Article on the Late Earl of Caithness. 55 

rental is ;j^4478. Stagenhoe Park, the property in Hertford- 
shire belonging to the family, extends to 613 acres, of which 
the rental is ^973. 

"The earldom of Caithness is of very great antiquity — some 
chroniclers say it is the oldest in Scotland — and has been held 
by different families. It was one of the titles of the ancient 
Vikings, or sea kings. In the ancient sagas and the Danish 
records mention is made of Dungaldus, Earl or Jarl of Caith- 
ness, as far back as 875. It is undisputed that the early earls 
were also Earls of Orkney. Harold, Earl of Caithness and 
Orkney, was a good and faithful servant of William the Lion 
till 1 1 96, when he broke out into rebellion, and after defeat 
by the troops of his royal master, was confined in a turret of 
Roxburgh Castle till his irate sovereign's wrath was appeased, 
after which the prisoner was set at liberty. His restless and 
rebellious spirit, however, soon got him into further trouble ; 
and after murdering John, Bishop of Caithness, he had the 
compunction (if he felt any) of seeing his son Torpin's eyes 
put out, the latter having become a hostage to the king for 
his father's fidelity. In 1231 John, Earl of Caithness, was 
murdered in his own house by his servants, in retaliation for 
his connivance at the burning by an angry mob of another 
Caithness bishop — Bishop Adam, a tithe-exacting ecclesiastic 
who had made himself obnoxious to the people. The succes- 
sion to the earldom about this time is involved in perplexity, 
and little that is authentic is known, but it appears that John, 
Earl of Caithness, was one of the Scottish nobles to whom 
Edward addressed a letter proposing the marriage of his son 
to Margaret of Norway, the young Queen of Scotland. He 
was also one of the peers who made default when Baliol held 
his first Parliament at Scone, February loth, 1282-93. 

" The title was next possessed by a branch of the royal 
family of Stuart, Prince David, Earl-Palatine of Strathearn, 
eldest son of King Robert II., having been by his father 
created Earl of Caithness early in his reign. On the at- 
tainder of Lord Brechin, afterward Lord Caithness, for the 
execrable murder of his nephew, James I., in 1437, the 
earldom was forfeited and annexed to the crown. A Sir 
George de Crichton, who had acquired the favor of King 
James II., and who had obtained several large grants of 
land from that monarch about 1450, was the next inheritor 



56 An Article on the Late Earl of Caithness. 

of the title, but on his death in 1455 the title became extinct, 
and the large estates appear to have reverted to the Crown. 

*' This brings the narrative to the date of the accession of 
the St. Clair or Sinclair family, for in the year mentioned 
(1455) James II. conferred the earldom on William Sin- 
clair, third Earl of Orkney, Lord High Chancellor of Scot- 
land, in compensation, so the charter bears, for a claim of 
right he and his heirs had to the lordship of Niddesdale. 
From this earl the branch of the family that recently enjoyed 
the title was remotely descended. William Sinclair, the 
second earl of this race, was killed with his royal master, 
James IV., at the battle of Flodden Field, in 15 13. The 
succession of John Sinclair, the third earl, marks the be- 
ginning of that series of feuds and quarrels with the neighbor- 
ing earls of Sutherland, in the course of which no form of 
baseness and cruelty on the part of the Sinclairs seems to 
have been too gross to be resorted to. The prosperity of the 
earldom reached its climax under George, the fourth earl, to 
whom the descent of Mr. James Augustus Sinclair, the Aber- 
deen banker, who is heir-presumptive to the title, remotely 
traces back. This fourth earl was a cruel and avaricious 
nobleman, who s'crupled not at the commission of the greatest 
crimes for the attainment of his purpose. In company with 
a neighboring chief, Donald Mackay, he took possession of 
the bishop's lands during the absence of the latter in banish- 
. ment in England, levied the rents and pocketed them. Fol- 
lowing up this barefaced robbery by more aggressive measures, 
Mackay possessed himself of Skibo, one of the bishop's 
palaces, while the noble lord, the instigator of this outrage, 
installed himself in the Castle of Strabister, another episcopal 
residence, which he fortified. In 1555 he was committed by 
the Queen Regent, then sojourning at Inverness, to the 
prisons of Inverness, Aberdeen and Edinburgh successively, 
for refusing to bring his countrymen with him to the court, 
then sitting at Inverness. Oddly enough, we find this gentle- 
man serving on the jury on the trial of the Earl of Bothwell 
for the murder of Darnley. But the foregoing were mild 
offences compared with what was to come. His hatred to 
John, Earl of Sutherland, was notorious and intense ; and, to 
gratify his thirst for revenge, he conceived the diabolical pur- 
pose of poisoning the earl and countess. His plan matured, 



An Article on the Late Earl of Caithness. 57 

he got his cousin, Isobel Sinclair, a relation also of the Suther- 
land family, to do the dirty work ; and by her means the 
noble earl and his lady were done to death by eating poisoned 
food prepared for their supper at Helmsdale in 1567, their 
only son and heir, Alexander Gordon, making a very narrow 
escape, not having returned from a hunting expedition in time 
to join his father and mother at supper. To free himself 
from the imputation of being concerned in the murder he 
punished some of the Earl of Sutherland's most faithful ser- 
vants under the color of avenging his death. Isobel Sinclair, 
the guilty instrument of this arch villainy, was soon after 
apprehended by the murdered earl's friends, tried in Edin- 
burgh and condemned, and during the time of her incarceration 
previous to her death in prison, on the day fixed for her ex- 
ecution she uttered the most dreadful imprecations on the 
Earl of Caithness for having incited her to the horrid act. 
No crime, however bold, daunted the heart of the tyrant. 
He had the effrontery, in order to get the young Earl of 
Sutherland into his hands, to carry him into Caithness, and 
though he was only fifteen years old, forced him to marry 
Lady Barbara Sinclair, his daughter, then thirty-two years of 
age. Divorce put an end to this unhappy //rt'/j'^/z, the lady con- 
tinuing a connection with her paramour, Mackay of Far, an ally 
of her father's. In the mean time, the Earl of Caithness had 
fixed his residence at Dunrobin, in Sutherlandshire, the seat of 
his minor son-in-law, whom he treated with great indignity, 
and burned all the papers belonging to the house of Sutherland 
on which he could lay his hands. He expelled many ancient 
families from Sutherland, put several of the inhabitants to 
death, and burned others, after disabling them in their person 
by new and unheard-of modes of torture, and stripping them 
of all their possessions. He even entertained the design of 
destroying the Earl of Sutherland himself, and marrying 
William Sinclair, his own second son, to Lady Margaret Gor- 
don, the eldest sister of the Earl of Sutherland ; but the latter, 
being apprised in time of his designs, succeeded in escaping 
from Dunrobin Castle. The bloodthirsty earl in revenge 
burned the Cathedral of Dornoch, and reduced the town, in 
which a band of followers of the Sutherland family had taken 
refuge. His eldest son, John, Master of Caithness, who car- 
ried out this expedition, accepted three hostages from the de- 



58 The Late Earls of Caithness. 

fenders that they would depart out of Sutherland within three 
months, but the earl, his father, refused to ratify the condi- 
tions, and basely beheaded the hostages. 

" This long-drawn-out tale of ferocious cruelty reached a 
climax in the punishment meted out to the earl's own son. 
The Master of Caithness, having incurred the suspicion and 
displeasure of his father for not having, when he found the 
opportunity, extirpated the whole of the inhabitants of Dor- 
noch, was flung into a dark dungeon beneath the castle, where 
for seven years he dragged out a wretched existence. His 
keepers, David and Ingram Sinclair, relatives of his own, de- 
termining at last to destroy him, kept him for some time with- 
out food. They then gave him a large mass of salted beef, 
and, withholding all drink from him, left him to die of raging 
thirst. This inhuman earl died in Edinburgh in September, 
1582, and his body was buried in St. Giles', where, mirabile 
dictic, a monument was erected to his memory. His heart was 
cased in lead and placed in the Sinclair's aisle in the church 
of Wick, where his murdered son was interred. The decline 
of the earldom commenced through the improvidence of this 
man's grandson and successor, George, the fifth earl. In the 
time of his great-grandson, George, sixth earl, the estates had 
become so burdened with debt that he sold them in 1672 to 
his principal creditor. Lord Glenorchy, and by him and his 
successors all that remained of the family possessions were 
disposed of, many of the wadsets with which the earldom was 
burdened having become purchasers of the several lands pos- 
sessed by them. Of the fifth or, as he was termed, 'the 
wicked Earl,' the compass of the article permits us only to say 
that he amply maintained the unenviable reputation earned 
by his grandfather. With the assistance of a professional 
blackleg, one Arthur Smith, who was condemned to death for 
counterfeiting the coin of the realm, he filled Caithness, Ork- 
ney, Sutherland and Ross with base money, the illegal work- 
shop being situated in a retired spot under the rock of Castle 
Sinclair, to which there was a secret passage from the earl's 
bedchamber. For his share in this crime the earl was appre- 
hended, but received the sham punishment of a pardon on 
promising, forsooth, to remain at peace with his hereditary 
foes the Earls of Sutherland. About the same time 'the 
wicked Earl ' distinguished himself by assaulting Lord George 



The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. 59 

Gordon in the High Street of Edinburgh ; and not long after 
he added to his laurels by surrendering a cousin, John, Lord 
Maxwell, whom he professed to befriend, and whom, on that 
footing, he lured to Castle Sinclair. Lord Maxwell, who was 
under hiding for the murder of Sir John Johnstone, was after- 
ward, in May, 1613, beheaded at the Cross of Edinburgh. 
With the death at the age of seventy-eight of this lawless 
bandit, the careers of the Earls of Caithness became much 
less eventful. 

"On the death of John, the eleventh earl, a major of the 
78th Foot (wounded in the groin by a musket-ball in America 
while reconnoitring with Sir Henry Clinton at the siege 
of Charlestown), the title went to a very distant branch of 
the family. Sir James Sinclair of Mey, the ninth in lineal 
descent from George Sinclair of Mey, third and younger 
son of the fourth earl. This Sir James Sinclair had two sons, 
and it is from the second son, Robert Sinclair of Durran, that 
Mr. James Augustus Sinclair is descended, his father having 
been Lieutenant- Colonel John Sutherland Sinclair, R.A., born 
in 1778." 

If the records of the titled families of these islands whose 
names stand in the Domesday Book should be brought to the 
light from their dusty hiding-places, how many would be 
found likewise stained with blood and foul with many a deed 
of cruelty and shame ? 

Attended morning session of the General Assembly of the 
Church of Scotland in the hall built for its use, and one of the 
worst in its acoustic properties I was ever in. The Lord High 
Commissioner came to the hall in the flamboyant style I 
described a few pages back and occupied a seat on a raised 
throne railed off at one end with a private entrance, his purse- 
bearer one side in powder and scarlet with a big red bag 
holding papers of one sort and another which he produced 
and put back without apparent purpose ; on the other his 
chaplain in gown and single eyeglass, flushed with good 
living, and a step behind two pages in red coats and powdered 
hair, an aid with more gold braid on his chest than it 
could well hold, a big gilt mace hanging at one side from the 
crimson canopy of the throne. His lordship took no part what- 
ever in the proceedings which were guided by the Moderator 
seated just below him at the head of a long table, about which 



60 The National Picture Gallery. 

the leading lights of the Church clustered. The delegates 
occupied the central portion of the hall and seemed a solid, 
heavy sort of men, almost all wearing full beards. I should 
say that, compared with a similar body in our country, they 
looked less intellectual and more sensible. They did business 
in a straightforward, dull way, speaking briefly and to the 
purpose on the subjects before them. There was less Scottish 
peculiarity of speech than I expected, but their fashion of 
clipping words and the faults of the hall made it difficult to 
catch the full purport of any speaker's remarks, even when 
we were seated not far away. Admission is by tickets, which 
I had procured, but our seats were so poor that I went out 
and was referred to the " agent," of whom I asked more 
desirable sittings. He said he could do nothing as the part 
allotted to spectators was crowded, but on my stating that we 
were from America, said there was a reserved portion of the 
hall where we could go at one shilling each. I bought 
four tickets and we were shown to better seats. Think of the 
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United 
States reserving a part of their place of convocation and 
selling tickets to it ! 

P.M. visited the National Picture Gallery, where we saw- 
many pictures by the leading Scotch artists of the last hundred 
years, as well as instances of the famous artists of many lands 
and times, including Van Dyck, Greuze, Salvator Rosa, Cuyp, 
Titian, Murillo, Valasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Watteau, 
Jordaens, Teniers, Jan Steen, and other masters, constituting 
by far the best gallery I have seen. They gave me the live- 
liest pleasure, but I am almost new to the best works of this 
delightful art and like an humble disciple will wait until I 
have more experience before giving my feelings expression. 

Our life here is very agreeable. We have a parlor where 
our meals are served, with good sleeping-rooms connect- 
ing, with fine views from our windows, all our wishes 
when indoors noiselessly attended by a waiter specially 
assigned to us and we gather about our table after a day's 
sight-seeing quite as at home. Prince Street extends in nearly 
a straight line for a mile from east to west, built up only on 
one side, is terraced in front in pleasure grounds down to the 
bottom of the deep ravine, beyond which rise grandly the 
buildings on the opposite side. Near at hand on the upper 



Rosslyti Chapel and Rosslyn Castle. 61 

terrace rises the majestic monument of Walter Scott to the 
height of 200 feet, in form of a Gothic spire, with arches like 
those in Melrose Abbey. Under the central canopy is a 
marble statue of Scott in a sitting posture, his dog Maida 
beside him. This monument was completed in 1844, at a cost 
of sixteen thousand pounds. Along the same stretch of 
terrace are bronze statues of Livingston, Professor Wilson 
(Christopher North), and several other celebrities. 

June I. — Driven by Frazer to Rosslyn seven and a half 
miles, over a fine road — macadamized, as all the roads are 
hereabout — with charming views on either hand, rounded and 
woody Corstorphine to the west, nearer and farther south- 
ward, the long uneven line of the Pentland Hills, and stretch- 
ing far along to the east and southeast the sad range of Lam- 
mermoor. Rosslyn Chapel is a poem in stone, unfinished, only 
the choir being completed. All parts are exquisitely carved, no 
pattern beingintroduced,butdoneasif pious heartshad patient- 
ly wrought their tender and gentle fancies with reverent hands 
into imperishable forms. Vaulted ceiling, columns, arches 
and panellings, all exposed parts, indeed, of the interior are 
ornamented with leaf and flower in bewildering variety and 
exuberance, affording the eye new pleasures at every turn. 
All this finds its fullest expression in the " Prentice's Pillar," 
of which tradition relates that the master builder, being 
unable to execute it from the designs he had in hand, went 
to Rome to study there, and on his return, finding it com- 
pleted by an apprentice, mad with envy, smote him dead 
with his mallet. Most fair stands this chapel in an enclosed 
field of richest verdure, and not to be forgotten. 

We lunched near by, and made the walk of two miles down 
the wild and rocky glen of the Esk to Hawthornden, passing 
at first through the court of Rosslyn Castle quite in ruins, 
but with a portion of the wall standing on the side of the 
deep ravine through which the muddy Esk flows in its narrow 
bed, and impressive as one looks up from below. In the space 
once enclosed by the castle walls stands an enormous yew said 
to be six hundred years old and still vigorous. The castle stands 
not far from the chapel, and these, with large lands all about, 
are the property of the present Earl of Rosslyn, descended 
from the family of that name. The glen is savagely pictu- 
resque, but not more so than the " Gorge " of the Black River 



62 A Ramble Over the Grounds of Sir James Drummond. 

in Cavendish, Vt. A foot-path leads down by the water, and 
following it we at length cross a bridge, to enter on the domain 
of Sir James Drummond of Hawthornden, a direct descendant 
of the poet Drummond, Shakespere^s friend, whom Ben Jon- 
son walked up from London to visit. A portion of the old 
house remains, and succeeding owners have added portions, 
making a picturesque mansion in an imposing situation on a 
bold rock descending precipitously to the stream nearly a hun- 
dred feet below. There is a curious arched passage cut 
through the solid rock just below the house, extending a hun- 
dred feet, and broadening into a chamber of say ten feet 
square, with recesses of nearly the same size on either hand, 
one called Bruce's bedroom, the other, which has quite a well- 
cut set of bookcases in the rock on one side, his library, the 
tradition being that Bruce once took refuge here. A villain- 
ous sword is shown here under an iron screen, said to be his. 
One cannot believe all he hears. But here are these strange 
subterranean chambers, and a well in a recess cut down at least 
twenty feet into the toughest sort of rock. A huge plane-tree 
stands near the house, said to be the one under which Jonson 
and Drummond sat in " conversation." It is an enormous 
tree, and flourishing as if good for another hundred years. 

I should say that when we entered Lord Rosslyn's chapel I 
paid a shilling apiece for my party of four, and a like sum 
when we entered the grounds of Sir Drummond. Gentle 
blood here does not despise the " siller." I understand 
the Esk does not much increase in volume before joining 
its south branch. If not, it is hard to see where " Ford there 
was none " in the time of Young Lochinvar. 'Tis easy to see 
he might have waded his horse across anywhere. Swimming 
is more poetical, but Scott generally, I find, makes all things 
conformable, taking a good deal of pains to do so ; witness 
his showing by actual trial that James Fitz-James could have 
ridden in one day from Coilantogle Ford to Stirling. 

Frazer met us at the lodge-gate, and we drove to Dalkeith 
House, the seat of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury, 
passing through the little village of Lasswade, where Scott 
passed some happy years of his early life, as he has written. 
Melville Castle, the seat of Viscount Melville, is near by. Dal- 
keith House stands in a large park with noble trees, singly 
and in clumps, over a far-spreading and luxuriant greensward. 



A Morning Service at St. Giles' Church. 63 

The house, or palace, is a large stone building, not specially 
grand or attractive in its exterior, but within containing pic- 
tures, china, and cabinets worth a king's ransom. I think the 
contents of the duke's drawing-room would bring at public 
sale in New York half a million dollars. We were freely shown 
all parts of this most interesting palace by a dignified matron, 
to whom I offered a shilling on our departure with a shame- 
facedness quite uncalled for. 

We have found almost no American news in the local papers 
at points we have visited, and I have found mostly a report 
about an inch long, day after day, of a game of chess, as the 
only item thought worthy of telegraphing from our side of 
the water. But as we drive into town to-night we see posted 
in the windows of the little shops where newspapers are sold 
freshly printed and written placards announcing " Appalling 
Accident in America," and eagerly buying an evening news- 
paper at my hotel, find a long telegram from New York giving 
the first known particulars of the dreadful flood which devas- 
tated the Conemaugh Valley below Pittsburgh, a horror which 
I fear, from the nature of the accident, will prove even more 
distressing than the first reports indicate. 

June 2, Sunday. — Attended morning service at St. Giles', the 
most ancient church in the city, although its renovated exterior 
does not indicate it. The well-known publisher, the late Dr. 
William Chambers, made judicious alterations almost wholly at 
his own expense, which have restored it to its pre-Reformation 
state. The old spire has never been disturbed. Its history is 
of national interest, but I must pass it over. Here the Nation- 
al League and Covenant was sworn to and subscribed in 1643. 
In 1636 the attempt to introduce the new "service-book" of 
Charles I. led to Jenny Geddis throwing her stool at the head 
of the dean, thereby intimating that she was too sensitive in 
her religious nature and too refined and cultivated of intel- 
lect to tolerate any service smacking of papacy. She con- 
founded "collect" with "colic," but distinctions were not nice 
then, nor forms of speech, and this uncomfortable female has 
a brass tablet to her memory. The church was crowded. 
The Lord High Commissioner came in his accustomed state 
and occupied a high stall against one of the walls, and after 
he had bowed thrice to the congregation we were at liberty to 
transfer our attention from this reflection of regal grandeur to 



64 A Walk Through the Old Farts of the City. 

the King of kings. The provost and bailies of the city enter- 
ed in a body in powdered wigs, preceded by halberdiers and 
followed by the judges in their wigs and gowns. A silver mace 
was hung behind the preacher's chair after he entered the pul- 
pit, and removed by a verger in red facings just before he 
vacated it. The prayers were read, and the service altogether 
was more ceremonious than that of the High Church Episco- 
palians at home. The grandeur of the whole service — for it 
had a certain grandeur in this massive church, high-roofed and 
many-pillared, with its broad arches and stained windows — was 
heightened by a heavy thunder-storm, whose solemn reverbera- 
tions rolled heavily through nave and choir and chapel. 

After lunch Dr. Walling called, and we walked for two hours 
through the old parts of the city, traversing the Canongate, 
Grass Market and Cowgate, and many obscure wynds and 
closes. These are now the most squalid portions of the city, 
and many poor wretches showed themselves on the streets and 
at the windows, but we can easily match anything I have seen 
so far in several parts of New York. A mist came on while 
we were out, '' a fine specimen of a right Scotch mist," the 
doctor said, which dampened my clothing and carried a chill 
with it. It is common here, and we have not had a clear morn- 
ing since our arrival, but mostly it scatters as quickly as it 
comes. 

June 3. — Rained all the morning, but the people pay little 
attention to it, carrying umbrellas, and further protected by 
water-proof outer garments, manufactured here in many 
kinds and colors, of fine finish and excellence. I should say, 
from what I see and hear, that the climate is for the most part 
sombre and dull, though never very hot or very cold. The 
morning papers have two columns of telegraphic despatches 
from New York about the fearful freshet. Passed the p.m. se- 
lecting photographs of scenes visited in Scotland. 

June 4. — Left on g.30 train for Loch Leven, crossing the 
Firth of Forth by a ferry — five miles — to Burntisland, thence 
on by rail through Kirkcaldy, where Carlyle and Irving once 
taught separate schools. Near Dysart are the ruins of an ex- 
ceedingly old castle known as Macduff's Castle. Forty-three 
miles from Edinburgh Kinross is reached, only twenty-seven 
miles by turnpike on the direct highway to Perth, seventeen 
miles farther on. Are driven through its old and crooked 



Loch Leven Castle. 65 

streets to an old and comfortable inn, where we dine well, the 
famous Loch Leven trout figuring on the bill of fare. Hired a 
boat and rowed to the island, half a mile from the shore, on 
which stands Loch Leven Castle, now a ruin, but with enough 
remaining to give a good idea of what it was once. The don- 
jon stands almost entire, as well as the walls enclosing the 
court-yard of 150 feet square ; and the southeast tower, con- 
taining the apartments in which Queen Mary was kept a pris- 
oner by the Confederated Lords in 1567 for a year, when she 
made her escape, is also well preserved. An ancient elm, called 
" Queen Mary's Tree," stands in the deserted court-yard, now 
overgrown with luxuriant grass, while all about the solid walls 
are festooned with wild ivy. Here, as in all these old ruins, 
there are no traces of woodwork remaining. Not much wood 
was ever used, but floors and doors are always lacking unless 
restored by later hands. All buildings, old and new, are of 
stone. I have not seen any sort of a wooden structure 
since we landed at Queenstown. Brick is used considerably 
in the larger towns of Ireland, but both there and in Scotland 
every sort of habitation and improvement for man's use is of 
the most durable materials, except the poorest cottages or huts, 
and they are of earth and plaster. What surprises me in these 
old ruins is the tenacity of the mortar. It outlasts the stone, 
and in cases I have noticed where a fissure or break has taken 
place, it is the rock and not the mortar which has yielded. 
This castle of Loch Leven dates back beyond authentic history,, 
and is attributed to Congal. King of the Picts. All the stone 
used in its construction was brought from the main-land no- 
where nearer than half a mile. The story of Mary's escape is 
told by Scott, and is full of romance. The lake is oval in shape,, 
nearly four miles long by about two wide, a charming sheet 
of water set among tranquil hills — Benarty, Lomond, Cleish, 
Ochil — with peaceful meadows at their feet. There are about 
seventy acres of the island on which the castle stands, and a 
still larger one named St. Serf, where are the ruins of the very 
ancient Priory of Port Mary, which figures in Scott's " Abbot." 
We have so far met very few tourists from home, being here 
too early in the season for the annual stream, but these are 
arriving at the Royal in daily increasing numbers. A curious, 
specimen, presuming me to be an American, began a conver- 
sation this evening in the smoking-room, and advised me by 
5 



66 Leave Edinburgh with Regret. 

all means to go to London, where he had just passed four 
days, having come on to Edinburgh by last night's train. He 
said I would find it an " orderly" city, and that if I felt as much 
interest in historical subjects as he himself, I should by 
no means omit seeing Madame Tussaud's Wax Works, they 
give so much information, although he confessed he should 
not have recognized the effigy of General Grant except by 
the label. 

June 5. — Frazer drove me slowly through the Canongate 
and Cowgate streets of the old town, to deepen the im- 
pression I have of them, the most interesting parts of all the 
city to me. Arranged for a coach to drive from here up 
through England by a route I have marked out. 

June 6. — Visited the Advocates' Library, housed in dim 
alcoves of a long arched hall, nowise comparable to Trinity in 
Dublin. There are present here a boyish letter of Charles I. 
to his father and one from Queen Mary to her mother, 
both distinctly legible ; also a copy of the first Bible printed 
from stereotyped plates. The library adjoins the courts of 
law, connected by a long, fine hall, adorned with portraits and 
statues of eminent judges and advocates. This seems to be a 
hall of consultation, and a dozen or so of lawyers were walk- 
ing up and down, singly and in couples, wearing black robes 
and queer powdered wigs, giving them, especially the younger 
ones, a bizarre appearance. We have passed ten very pleas- 
ant days in Edinburgh, and leave it with fond regret. It is 
a stately and beautiful city. 

June 7. — Left the Royal on our hired coach to go as far as 
Stratford-on-Avon or London, or, if sooner tired of it, to dis- 
miss it at any intermediate point. It is the form of a coach 
called here a drag, having a closed coach-body, with seats in- 
side for four, and on the roof for ten, besides those for coach- 
man and groom. I sent direct to London all superfluous lug- 
gage, putting hand-bags, wraps, etc., inside, and one steamer 
trunk on the roof. We set out with considerable ee/at and 
^ bowled along the streets of the city, through the suburbs, and 
entered on the fine old-time stage road to London at the rate 
of ten miles an hour. Twelve miles to the south we strike 
the Lammermoor Hills, and traverse them for the most part 
along a glen beside the Heriot, a clear, bright stream, tribu- 
tary to the Tweed, and in some part of its course one of the 



Melrose Abbey. 67 

sources of the water-supply of Edinburgh, gathered in a reser- 
voir some twenty-five miles distant from the city. The scenery 
all along is charming, with wide prospects from the roof of the 
coach, the motion exhilarating, and all is life and enjoyment in 
our little party of four, when the nigh wheeler, after " strik- 
ing" badly, seemed stunned, and pulling up short, staggered 
and reeled as if to fall. After a moment's rest he seemed to 
revive, and we went on again to Stowe, some three miles far- 
ther, and twenty-seven from Edinburgh. Here we lunched 
and baited, and a half hour later, as we drew near Galashiels 
on the Gala River, our invalid wheeler again showed heavy 
pain ; coachman and groom sprung to him, had him out of 
harness in a trice, left him in charge of the groom, put one of 
the leaders in his place, and on we sped to Melrose, seven miles 
away, but shining with somewhat diminished splendor. Put up 
at the Abbey Hotel, immediately connected with Melrose 
Abbey by a door into the grounds, and had rooms assigned us 
which looked directly through the nave to the fine eastern 
window of the chancel. We went at once into the abbey and 
wandered among its ruins until dusk, and later sat long, 
looking from our windows on the beautiful eastern window, 
revealed in the full light of the rising moon. 

"Slender shafts of shapely stone, 
By foliaged tracery combined." 

Melrose Abbey, now a grand and beautiful ruin, was 
founded by David I. in 1136 as a monastery for the Cister- 
cians, and dedicated to St. Mary. Edward I. of England 
destroyed it, and Robert Bruce rebuilt it in the early part of 
the fourteenth century in the late Gothic style with elaborate 
magnificence, as the ruined church, the only portion remain- 
ing, abundantly testifies. The nave and central tower are 
much destroyed ; only a small part of the roof remains over the 
south transept ; but the grace of the slender and lofty pillars, 
with their rich capitals, the harmonious proportions, and 
chiefly the symmetrical tracery of the windows, and the 
association of all with the tender and glowing poetry of Scott, 
make of this ruin a memorable object. Among the tombs is 
one containing the heart of Robert Bruce, and another with a 
bizarre effigy, called the grave of the wizard, Michael Scot. 
William Douglas, " the dark knight of Liddesdale," and James 



68 At Abbotsford. 

II., earl of that name, with others of that family, are buried 
here. In the grass-grown choir beneath the broken central 
tower stands a section of a fallen column on which, our guide 
informed us, Scott used to sit for hours at a time in medita- 
tion. The church was of goodly size, the nave even now some 
250 feet long and the transept 130 feet. 

Before retiring my coachman came to say that the groom 
had just come from Galashiels, that the sick horse had dropped 
down dead all of a sudden in the stable, that he had himself 
telegraphed to Edinburgh for another horse, which would be 
here ready to start at 9 a.m. to-morrow. He is the same 
coachman, George Punton, who drove Mr. Carnegie and his 
party of twelve, including Mr. Blaine and his two daughters, 
last summer from London to the north of Scotland, a short, 
stoutish, fresh, cheerful man of thirty-five, self-possessed, 
resourceful, and handling four horses as if they were one. He 
is in the employ of Scott, Croall & Sons, Job and Post- 
masters — so their card reads — of whom I hire my coach at a 
fixed sum per day. This firm own and work in various ways 
sixteen hundred horses, keeping their lives insured. The 
farrier at Galashiels reports that the horse we lost yesterday 
died of heart disease. 

June 8. — At 9 a.m. George is at the door fresh and smiling 
with a stout wheeler to fill the gap made yesterday, but the 
becoming uniformity of our four dappled grays is broken by 
the new-comer in his soberer suit of dark bay. However, he 
looks stanch and true, and we take the road from the 
narrow, crooked streets of Melrose, in the market square of 
which stands an old stone cross with the date 1642, to Abbots- 
ford, three miles west, over a charming country, with the 
Eildon Hills — the Tremontium of the Romans — on our left 
close at hand, the highest of the three peaks rising 1385 feet. 
The famed wizard, Michael Scot, whose tomb and bizarre 
effigy we saw in the abbey, is reputed to have formed these 
three peaks by cleaving apart the one rounded dome erewhile 
standing there. But a greater magician of the family has 
cast a mightier spell over all this region, and here we are at 
Abbotsford, where the open sesame of a shilling apiece admits 
us to such rooms as are open to visitors. These are shown 
by a civil custodian, and consist of Sir Walter's study, 
library, drawing-room, armory and entrance hall, shown in 



The Home of Scott. 69 

the order given above. Everything in these rooms is pretty 
much as Scott left it, and they are crowded with objects of 
exceeding interest, which I can undertake only to barely men- 
tion in small part. In the study are his writing-table and 
ample leathern chair, which stands as if waiting for him, 
with books and pictures, one of these, a portrait of Rob Roy, 
covering the walls. A small turret-room opens from this, 
which Scott was wont to call " Speak-a-bit," alluding to its 
convenience for a tete-a-tetc, where is kept the bronze cast of 
his head taken after death, showing the strong features com- 
posed and calm. The carved panelling of this little room is 
said to have belonged to a bedstead used by Queen Mary at 
Jedburgh during her visit and dangerous illness there in 1566. 

The library, a handsome room 40 by 15 feet, with a ceiling 
richly carved in oak, copied mostly from the roof of Rosslyn 
Chapel, contains about twenty thousand volumes standing 
orderly on their shelves, mostly in handsome bindings, the 
upper ranges being reached from a light iron gallery extend- 
ing round. The marble bust done in 1820 by Chantry has the 
place of honor, and conveys an expression of more humor than 
in the copies I have seen. There is also a full-length portrait 
of Scott's eldest son, the second Sir Walter, in the uniform of 
the 15th Hussars, a tall, slender young man — he died young — 
with no resemblance to his father. There are the miniatures 
of Scott and Mademoiselle Charpentier, afterward Lady Scott 
(these are the pictures they exchanged before marriage), and a 
score of most interesting historical articles. The mother-of- 
pearl cross which Queen Mary last pressed to her lips is here. 

The drawing-room is a large well-proportioned room hung 
with Chinese paper, and contains many" interesting paintings, 
including a water-color sketch of Sophia Scott (afterward 
Mrs. Lockhart), one of Anne Scott in fancy dress, a portrait 
of Scott's mother, and one of Scott himself by Sir Henry 
Raeburn, painted in 1809, representing him at full length, 
seated, with his greyhound Percy at his feet, and the valley of 
the Yarrow for a background. There is an " awesome" por- 
trait of the head of Mary Queen of Scots after decapitation, 
with the signature of the painter, Amyas Cawood, dated 
February 9th, 1587, the day after her execution, a picture to 
haunt one with its stony features of ashen pallor. 

The armory bristles with all sorts of weapons, offensive and 



70 To Dryhurgh Abbey. 

defensive, admirably disposed, and, like all the objects here, 
in excellent condition. Here are a sword given to the great 
Marquis of Montrose by Charles I., and Rob Roy's gun, a 
handsome long Spanish-barrelled piece with his initials, 
R. M. C, Robert McGregor Campbell, the latter name as- 
sumed by him in compliment to the Argyle family ; also his 
broadsword with Andrew Ferrara blade and basket-hilt, and 
long Highland dirk with blade of the same maker. 

The entrance hall in like manner is filled with armor of all 
ages and countries. Here are the original keys of " The Heart 
of Midlothian," or Old Tolbooth of Edinburgh. There are 
two fine cap-a-pie suits of polished steel tilting armor, glorious 
to see. The last suit of clothes Scott wore lies well preserved 
in a glass case, including a singularly high and wide-brimmed 
white hat. I noticed the shoe, whose outlines indicate a 
small, shapely foot. 

Abbotsford is built of a light cheerful stone, with consider- 
able ornament of one kind and another in its ambitious 
architecture, and is really a fine residence, but one has a 
feeling that somehow it is not altogether what the builder 
intended, as if he had been compelled to stay his hand before 
having all to his mind. No doubt he tried for too much, and 
enslaved himself to meet the demands on him. The situation, 
too, is on the level bank of the river, sloping upward in its rear, so 
that it is shut out of view until one comes right upon it. But the 
broad brown Tweed flows swiftly with murmuring song close 
below the windows of the cheerful alcoves of his goodly library ; 
no fairer fields may be than those sloping southward to the sun 
on the opposing bank far up and down the valley ; a deep 
serenity is over all, and one can feel how dear to the master's 
heart Abbotsford must have become. The place is now owned 
by the Hon. Mrs. Maxwell Scott, Sir Walter's great-grand- 
daughter, the daughter of a daughter of Lockhart. The 
custodian informed me that about six thousand persons visited 
Abbotsford last season. About twenty thousand visited Burns' 
birthplace during the same time. 

We drove back through Melrose to Dryburgh Abbey, five 
miles, that we might see where Scott lies buried. We climb 
Bemerside Hill, whose summit commands a glorious view of 
the Tweed Valley and all the fertile space southward to the 
blue line of the Cheviots. It is said that here Sir Walter 



A History of the Abbey. 71 

always reined up his horse to admire the scene. Dryburgh 
Abbey was founded in 1150 by Hugh de Moreville, Lord of 
Lauderdale and Constable of Scotland. The Tweed sweeps 
round the well-wooded knoll on which it stands. In 1322 
Edward II., returning from his unsuccessful invasion of 
Scotland burned the monastery which then underwent 
repairs. At the Reformation it passed into a temporal lord- 
ship, as was the fate of such institutions, and is now owned 
by the Earl of Buchan. It is much in ruins but specially 
interesting by reason of the considerably well-preserved 
remains of so much of the monastic buildings, including the 
refectory, the abbot's parlor and the wine and almonry 
cellars. There is a St. Catharine's window in this part of the 
ruin, 10 feet in diameter, much overgrown with ivy, and high 
up the same wall climb rose-vines gay with flowers against the 
hoar}^ stones taken from the same quarry as those of Melrose 
Abbey. In the grounds stands a yew of great size, said 
to have been planted soon after the foundation of the abbey. 
The most beautiful and interesting part of the ruin is that of the 
north transept, called St. Mary's Aisle. Here Sir Walter Scott 
was buried on the 26th of October, 1832, in the tomb of his 
maternal ancestors, the Haliburtons of Newmains, at one time 
owners of the abbey. His wife lies beside him. She died 
in 1823. On the other side is the tomb of his oldest son, and 
at his feet that of his son-in-law, Lockhart. No others of his 
family are buried here. All is fair and peaceful around this 
tender and venerable spot, cheered by the various songs of 
many tuneful birds, a spot, fitting for the final rest of a weary 
and gifted soul, who has vastly added to the innocent and 
high enjoyment of his kind, leaving a name the world will not 
willingly let die. 

Crossing the Tweed by a foot-bridge we rejoined our coach 
and sped merrily on for twelve miles over the same fair and 
fertile country we find all along to the ancient Border town of 
Jedburgh, the county town of Roxburghshire, situated in the 
pretty valley of the Jed. It was a " royal burgh" seven hun- 
dred years ago, and the chief town of the middle marches. 
The citizens in the old days were famous for their skill in 
handling a peculiar partisan called the " Jethart Staff." Their 
war-cry was " Jethart's here," and their coat-of-arms a mount- 
ed trooper charging. The proverb of "Jethart justice," 



72 Jedburgh, and What it Contains. 

" Where in the morn men hang and draw, 
And sit in judgment after," 

appears to have taken its rise from some instances of sum- 
mary justice executed on the Border marauders, says Black, 
The population of the town is now about 3500, chiefly well 
built in modern houses, some few of the old buildings 
still remaining ; among these a long two-story house with 
the Scottish coat-of-arms chiselled on one of the walls, 
where Queen Mary is said to have lain dangerously sick for 
several weeks after her visit to Bothwell at Hermitage Castle, 
not far away. 

But Jedburgh has its lion in the favorite form of a ruined 
abbey dating back to near the middle of the twelfth cen- 
tury, and built by that father of so many in this kind, David 
I., for a society of Augustine friars from France. There is 
a fine Norman west door, a flamboyant St. Catharine's window, 
and a graceful display of pillars and arches in the nave. The 
triforium and clerestory are in excellent preservation, and show 
the Norman mingled with the Gothic in an interesting man- 
ner. The tower is in perfect condition, 100 feet high, and I 
was simple enough to be persuaded into going to its top by 
the narrow winding stairs usual in these structures of the un- 
comfortable old times, and have registered a vow never again 
to elevate my two hundred pounds avoirdupois to any such alti- 
tude by a similar process. 

Our inn here is the Spread Eagle, a gilt effigy of the same 
surmounting the door, not the " fierce gray bird with bending 
beak" of Uncle Sam, but a most tame dunghill creature with 
double head and supine tail flattened on the wall, humiliating 
for the free-born American to look upon. But here under its 
feeble wings we are doomed to stay over the more than Puri- 
tan Scottish Sabbath. 

June 9, Sunday. — A sour, rainy, chilly day, so that a melan- 
choly fire in our dingy private parlor in this mouldy old house 
agreed well with the state of nature outside. Finished read- 
ing Froude's " Two Chiefs of Dunboy," an exceedingly in- 
teresting book as illustrating the state of things in Ireland 
something over a century ago. In the afternoon walked 
in the churchyard by the abbey, noticing on the stones 
names often appearing in the histories and stories of the 
old Border times — Turnbull, Allan, Elliott, Graham, Hilson, 



Off for Newcastle. 73 

Chisholm, Fenwick, Rutherford, Douglas, Grahamslaw, 
Cranstoun, Borthwick, Laidlaw. 

Jutie 10. — Fine, cool, bracing morning. Took the road at jo 
A.M. for Newcastle, fifty-six miles, to be done in easy stages of 
two days. Followed the narrow and picturesque valley of the 
Jed some seven miles, then bore away more to the south straight 
upon the long, wide range of the Cheviot Hills. These are a 
series of low hills, or rather an irregular succession of broken 
ranges, with innumerable small peaks and domes, woodless, 
grassy to the top, rising out of a high moor tufted with wild 
grass and stretching away indefinitely in all directions, 
with no outcropping of rock of any sort — at least until the 
southern slope of the plateau is reached. On the crest of 
almost the last ridge to the south is the dividing line 
between the two countries, and we pass from Scotland into 
England at a good round trot, and for the first time are on 
right English soil. All about us, on hill-sides, in valleys, on 
broad stretches of moor, are thousands of sheep — for the whole 
region is pasture — watched by shepherds whose solitary huts 
rise infrequent, the work being mostly done by dogs of the 
collie breed, whose movements we watched with lively interest. 
Each shepherd was accompanied by at least two of these, and at 
a quiet intimation conveyed by voice or gesture they headed 
the flock in any required direction, closed it up or opened it 
out or separated it into as many parts as was wanted, without 
a moment's indecision. George, our Scotch coachman, says 
he has himself seen the collie go into a large herd of cattle 
pasturing in common and bring out those of his master as 
handily and more speedily than a man could do. 

After driving twenty-six miles to Otterbourne, we are still 
on the southern slope of one of the ranges of the Cheviot. 
We purposed stopping at the little tavern here, but found all 
good space taken by a party of young folk from Newcastle on 
their Whitsuntide holidays : 

" The Otterbourne's a bonnie burn, 
'Tis pleasant there to be ; 
But there is nought at Otterbourne 
To feed my men and me." 

Therefore we drove back four miles to the Redesdale Arms, 
Horsley, where we are in just such a snug, clean, quiet country 
inn as I have read about and longed for since boyhood, and in 



74: Newcastle-on-the- Tyne. 

our private parlor I am closing the day with these imperfect 
notes of it, a lump of coal flickering in the high grate, two tall 
candles in high, silver-gilt stands on my table, half-a-dozen 
small cases of stuffed birds on the low walls, solid mahogany 
furniture, an old mirror, and exceeding peace. Such a broad, 
free view we had after dinner, just two hours ago, the still 
water of the Redes winding below us, with its narrow valley 
above, growing dusky in the slant rays of sunset ! 

June II. — Clear and cool. Had the best breakfast since 
leaving home — brook trout from the stream near by, savory 
ham, excellent coffee with rich cream, toothsome bread, all 
good and well served, and at a cost of unwonted moderation. 
We shall have a kindly memory of the Redesdale Arms, into 
which we fell by accident. We were on the road at 9 a.m., 
with much such scenery as yesterday, now on a lower level ; 
hills sharp and gradual, long stretches of moor and fen, pretty 
valleys, high pastures with multitudinous sheep, abundance 
of small game, rabbits, grouse, partridges, plover, and many 
sorts of birds. I saw the starling for the first time and the 
meadow-lark, although I had been asking for a sight of the 
latter ever since we landed in Ireland. This morning George 
said, pointing with his whip, " A lark," and a small brown bird 
rose toward the sun with a continuous, wavering song, clear 
and sweet, ever mounting higher, until the tiny form, lost to 
sight in the sun's effulgence, seemed to dissolve in melody. 

Lunched and baited at the Highland Inn, whose sign of a 
Highland piper, looking as if he had come out of bonny Scot- 
land with Prince Charlie in '45 and got badly " left," very 
fairly indicated the entertainment for man and beast. But it 
could have been worse, and it sustained us well for the ten 
remaining miles, when we entered the smoky, bustling town 
of Newcastle-on-the-Tyne, and drew to their doors a fair share 
of its 150,000 inhabitants as we rattled up to the Station Hotel. 
There is little here we care for, and we are here only because 
it is in our way. The town lies on the left bank of the Tyne, 
nine miles from its rhouth in the midst of an extensive coal- 
field, and is probably the chief coal-exporting city of the 
world. The old church of St. Nicholas has a striking lantern- 
tower resembling that of St. Giles' in Edinburgh. The keep 
of the castle, the only part remaining, dates from 1170, and is 
85 feet high — to the top of the turret, 107 feet — with walls 12 



A Pleasant Walk to Durham Cathedral. 75 

to i8 feet thick. There is a bridge over the Tyne designed by 
Robert Stephenson, and above its roadway, another for 
railways, both solid, and doing excellent service. The upper 
level is 112 feet above the water, and on the top of one end is 
a locomotive built by George Stephenson, " Stephenson's No. 

I Engine." 

June 12. — At 9 A.M. left for Durham, fourteen miles. Passed 
through Chester-le-Street, the only place of interest on the 
route, an old town of 6ooo population. It was the seat of the 
Bishop of Bernecia from 883 to 995. Saw near at hand on the 
left, Lumley Castle, the seat of the Earl of Scarborough. At 

II A.M. pulled up at the portals of the County Hotel, Dur- 
ham, another good instance of an English inn. And I desire 
to put on grateful record my relish of such a mug of ale as one 
encounters but few times in his mortal pilgrimage. Strength- 
ened thereby with the adjunct of an excellent lunch, I took 
my little party by a pleasant walk along the Wear to the 
Cathedral, which stands proudly on a high tongue of land 
around which the river forms a loop. Deeply impressive to 
me is this massive pile, with its square Norman central tower 
of 214 feet in height, its walls 70 feet high, its length 510 feet, 
its width across the transepts 170 feet, across the nave, 80 
feet. But these figures give no idea of the effect of mingled 
awe and admiration with which one gazes from the western 
end through the pillared nave and rich choir, and still beyond 
over the reredos to the great rose-window over the " Nine 
Altars." The huge piers and pillars supporting the arches on 
which the triforium rests, the clerestory above, and still far- 
ther away the heavily groined roof, all parts complete and vari- 
ously representing in form and ornament the changing phases 
of what are styled the Romanesque and Gothic, almost 
oppress the senses, like the near presence of some majestic and 
awful object in nature. 

I shall attempt no description of this great Cathedral, reck- 
oned as one among the six finest in England. I do not believe 
any description of cathedrals can convey an adequate impres- 
sion. They may be felt, not described. Nor shall I dwell 
upon its history, which begins when Bishop Williams, the 
second bishop after the Norman Conquest, completed the 
choir in 1093. The work went on through four centuries, and 
some changes, called "renovations," mostly for the worse. 



76 The Cathedral and its Surroundings. 

have occurred since. It is dedicated to St. Andrew, and has 
been specially honored by the presence of the bones of St. 
Cuthbert, which are supposed to rest behind the reredos in a 
spot of peculiar distinction. Great must have been the odor 
of his sanctity, for the monks of Lindisfarne, fearful that the 
Danes would covet his bones, brought them here and bestowed 
them in a church completed in 990, succeeded by the present 
Cathedral, because this spot is better fitted for defence. Out of 
deference to his saintly abhorrence of woman as a suggester of 
evil thoughts, it is said, the Lady's Chapel is set in the unusual 
position of the west end, and some twenty-five feet from the 
western door is a blue stone cross in the pavement of the nave, 
beyond which no woman must venture in the old days. Pre- 
tended personal articles and memorials of the fine old saint 
are shown to such an extent in cases in the library that one 
might fancy himself among the relics in a Mexican cathedral 
rather than in a Reformed Protestant church. 

I was much interested in the monastic buildings formerly 
occupied by the Benedictine monks in connection with the 
Cathedral. These are well preserved, and the huge kitchen, 
still used as such, with its conical roof and larders and high 
windows ; the long hall of the dormitory, with its oaken 
roof black with centuries ; the comfortable refectory ; the ample 
cloisters, with their " carrels" or recesses for study, call back the 
old days, and the imagination easily peoples these stout habi- 
tations with buxom monks, wearing the days of their life away 
in animal content, caring little what befell, so that the venison 
pasty was hot and toothsome and the ale clear and foaming in 
the tankard. By-the-bye, I wonder if the beer I have this day 
commended is brewed after the recipe left by the good monks 
for the benefit of the inhabitants of quaint Durham for all 
time ? 

For centuries the bishops of Durham were earls of North- 
umberland as well, and most princely was their state of inde- 
pendent sway over the Palatinate of Durham. They occupied 
the castle on the other side of the Palace Green, dating back 
to William the Conqueror, rebuilt and altered since, and now 
since 1833 occupied by Durham University, the lofty keep 
being used by the students as dormitories. There is in one part 
a fine carved staircase of oak black with age, leading to a 
series of apartments used as living and sleeping rooms by 



Oti the Way to York. 77 

certain judges of the courts and professors of the University. 
One of these, an ancient hall about 40 feet in length by 25 
wide and 20 high, with its huge handsome fireplace, built four 
centuries ago, in which a good fire was burning, window 
recesses the thickness of the wall — not less than 12 feet — heavy 
oaken wainscoting with carved oak ceiling, and rich old 
mahogany furniture, was a delight to me. It is used by the 
professors, who come up here for their dessert after they have 
dined in hall below with the students. If I might not be 
Bishop of Durham, I think the next thing I should choose 
would be to serve as a professor here, and sitting in the mellow- 
light of this quaint room, with a cobwebbed bottle or so to 
give a smack to the old jokes over the walnuts, wear the hours 
away. 

Ju)ie 13. — The sweet Cathedral bells were chiming the first 
quarter after 9 a.m. as George gave rein to his freshened 
horses through the ancient city of Durham, and we entered on 
the level highway in the direction of York, sixty-eight miles 
southward. The road is macadamized, and ever since we left 
Edinburgh smooth and firm as the driveways in Prospect 
Park. Lunched at the King's Head, in the town of Dar- 
lington, important only for its manufactures of woollens and 
carpets. The luncheon was excellent, and in an hour we were 
on the road again, and at 4 p.m. are snugly within the portals 
of a second Golden Lion at North Allerton, having en- 
countered the first in Stirling. This is a market town half 
way between Durham and York, and our inn was of conse- 
quence in the old coaching days. The main street is over 100 
feet wide, paved with cobble-stones from the front line of the 
little houses slantwise down to the centre, leaving there a 
level road-bed, say 20 feet wide. 

Our ride to-day has been over a fair rolling country, culti- 
vated into greater fertility as we advance southward. The 
arable lands are prepared for crops with great pains, the heavy 
soil being worked to thorough mellowness, tilled fields, mead- 
ows and pastures are separated by verdant hedges, on whose 
line stand single trees not unfrequently, so that the wide pros- 
pect on either hand offers a most agreeable variety. Here 
and there rise the red-tiled roofs of low cottages scattered 
over the landscape, with now and then a stately mansion half 
hidden among trees. We dash through the single street of 



78 On a Coach- Top. 

many a quaint village, drawing to the cottage-doors stout little 
children whose flaxen hair and blue eyes declare their Saxon 
descent. The white plastered walls are green with ivy and 
flushed with clambering roses, now in full bloom, contented 
cattle browse in the rich pastures or lie in the shadow of broad 
beeches, oaks and elms, and over all is the air of an exceeding 
and enduring tranquillity. The day has been almost cloudless, 
but the sun does not shine with the fierce glare of our June at 
home, but as if his rays passed through some medium which 
partially abstracts their fervor. The songs of many birds 
went with us all along, the thrush, hedge-sparrow, and, 
chiefest, the meadow-lark, who rained his melody down from 
the upper air, like faint tones from the Celestial City. 

How many times have I yearned to ride over some interest- 
ing part of England on the top of a coach, and now the fact 
exceeds the anticipation ! The Englishman seeks to hide his 
home life, and the first thing he undertakes in building is a 
high wall of stone or brick to shut out even the prying eyes of 
passers-by. But from the vantage of our coach-top we over-: 
look his insufficient defences, and get views of the pretty 
swards and flower-beds and gardens and orchards hidden 
behind these churlish barriers. I should say, from what little 
I have seen of the Briton, that his nature is a good deal like 
his home, rough and repellent on the outside, but sunny and 
cheerful once you are allowed inside. We crossed the Tees, a 
few miles below Durham, and noted the plain on our left just 
before reaching North Allerton, where the battle of the Stand- 
ard was fought between the English and Scotch in 1138. 

June 14. — On our way again, all in good condition at 9 
A.M., lunching at the York, a poorish tavern in the little village 
of Easingwold, and reaching the welcome of the Black Swan 
in York at 4 p.m., where we are made comfortable in clean, 
old-fashioned rooms. Found mail awaiting us, and eagerly 
devoured the news from home. Our ride to-day has been 
almost a repetition of that of yesterday, except that the coun- 
try is more level, stretching away, indeed, like a Western 
prairie, only far on our left lay the blue range of the Appleton 
Hills. York is a very ancient city, the Eboracum of the 
Romans, who made it their principal city of Britain during 
their long occupancy of five hundred years. It was founded, 
so go the records, by Julius Agricola, made Governor of 



York, and its History. 79 

Britain by Vespasian, a.d. 78. The Emperor Hadrian took 
up his residence here a.d. 120, and it became a luxurious 
Roman capital. The Sixth Legion accompanied the emperor 
and continued here nearly three hundred years. Severus 
came here about 207 in his old age and died in 210, was 
cremated, and his inurned ashes taken to Rome for burial. 
In 304 Constantius Chlorus, Emperor of the West, came to 
Britain and took up his residence here, where he died two 
years later, when his son, Constantine the Great, was here 
proclaimed emperor. When the Romans withdrew from 
Britain in 420, the city, left to its fate, was sacked by the bar- 
barian Scots and Picts, but despite all calamities still con- 
tinued to hold its importance through all the changing fortunes 
of English history. During the Wars of the Roses, Richard 
Plantagenet, Duke of York, fell at the 'battle of Wakefield, 
1460, and his head, crowned with a paper diadem, was, by 
order of Queen Margaret, stuck on a pole over Micklegate 
Bar, one of the city gates — 

" Off with his head and set it on York Gate, 
So York may overlook the town of York." 

And so through all the centuries this has continued to be 
almost the chief city in historical interest in the kingdom. 
It has now settled down into a prosaic city of some 60,000 
inhabitants, and while for the most part wearing a modern 
look, has many characteristics of the past. It is a walled 
city ; and after dinner we walked on the top for a considerable 
portion of the circuit, the whole being two and three quarter 
miles, and complete, except in those few places where neces- 
sary improvements for extending the city outside are going 
on. These walls are about 18 feet high and 4 feet thick, with 
an outer crenellated parapet, and rounded into towers a few 
feet higher at short and regular intervals. There are eight 
entrances or gates, called " bars," in the circumference. 
These consist of square towers built over a circular arch, 
with embattled turrets at the angles. They had an outer 
gate with a massy chain across, then a portcullis, and then a 
heavy inside gate. In several of the gates these are still pre- 
served. When a portion of the walls gives way it is restored 
at the expense of the city, and these are used as promenades. 
These walls are ancient, going back to the time of Edward 



80 York Cathedral. 

II., and in Henry III.'s time a patent was granted, empower- 
ing the levy of a toll on goods coming for sale in York, to be 
applied to the support of the walls and fortifications. 

At sunset strolled out and looked at the glory and pride of 
York, its Cathedral. It requires more than one look to 
realize the vast size of this structure. It is cruciform, with 
an extreme length from east to west of 524 feet, height of 100 
feet, 104 feet wide across the nave and 224 feet across the 
transepts. The two western towers are 201 feet and the cen- 
tral tower 216 feet high. The satisfaction of the first glance 
is somewhat lessened by a certain blotchy appearance caused 
by patches of the fagades peeling off and showing the white 
of the magnesian limestone of which the Cathedral is con- 
structed. These ragged spots contrast unpleasantly with the 
surface, darkened by time, which is slowly consuming the 
lavish ornaments of the exterior, and even weakening the 
strength of the very walls, so that a considerable force of 
masons is constantly at work repairing damages. 

June 15. — Hired a hack and drove about the city, noting 
many quaint old houses with overhanging upper stories, and 
;-ejoiced in one of these dated 1579, with its carved gables, its 
projecting windows, its exposed frame of heavy timbers filled 
with yellow-tinted plaster. Also drove entirely round the 
circuit of the walls, visiting the several gates ; then a pictu- 
resque, ivy-clad manor house, built by Henry VIII., now a 
school for the blind ; then into the Philosophical Society's 
Gardens, in which stand the picturesque ruins of St. Mary's 
Abbey and what is called the Multangular Tower, consisting 
of ten sides, determined to be a Roman work of the third 
century. It is capped by several layers of stone of mediaeval 
date. It is in perfect preservation, and formed one of the 
angle-towers of the walls of Roman York. Visited in the 
same gardens an old timber and plaster building, supposed to 
have been the hospitium of the abbey. In the upper room — 
the old refectory — the Yorkshire Philosophical Society has a 
museum of antiquities, mostly Roman, consisting of stone 
coffins, altars, tessellated pavements, coins, lamps, tiles, 
vases, urns, articles of Roman use and ornament in great 
variety. Almost all these were found here in excavating for 
the site of the great railway station, said, by the way, to be 
the longest in the world — 800 feet. Startling it was to see the 



A Ponpoiis Verger. 81 

abundant, rich, dark auburn hair of a Roman lady taken from 
her coffin of stone, still fastened with two pins of polished jet. 
It might, so lively is the look of it, have been shorn away in 
its glossy pride but yesterday. From another coffin came a 
fillet of gold which had rounded the brow of a woman buried 
therein, and in her mouth a small Roman coin — the denarius. 
Was this Charon's fee for her ferriage over the Styx, and did 
he, in the press of business that day, neglect to take it ; or 
did pity or admiration of her beauty move his churlish spirit ; 
or, sad to think, has her shade never crossed, but is still wan- 
dering, wailingly, on the hither shore, because he will have 
no denarius, but his obolus only ? Well, here is the coin, 
waiting, waiting. 

Passed most of the p.m. in the Cathedral. Entered by the 
door in the south transept and felt disappointed. Whether 
the ponderous majesty of Durham Cathedral still overshad- 
owed my mind, or whether this was not my cathedral day, or 
whether the circumstances were untoward, I could not realize 
the impression which should come from the first view of so 
vast an interior. The noble heights, the broad spaces, the 
clustered columns, the harmonious and pure ornaments, 
wrought by the pious skill of centuries — all these indeed 
moved me deeply, but something was wanting. The plague 
of all places of interest here is the professional guide, from 
whom it is so difficult to escape. Here it is one of the 
vergers, who was in the act of collecting a drove of visitors to 
show them the choir and other parts of the Cathedral kept 
under lock and key and only exhibited on payment of sixpence. 
I tried to arrange with him to be shown about later, but this 
could not be, as no other party can be allowed to-day. So 
we paid each his toll as we filed through a narrow gate lead- 
ing to the south aisle and were conducted through the beauti- 
ful lady's room, the treasury, the chapter-room and choir, un- 
able in reverent silence to consider these beautiful things, the 
mind being distracted and worried by the hard, quick, monot- 
onous description in a set order of just what the guide sees 
proper to call one's attention to. For instance, taking a 
straddling attitude before the glorious eastern window and 
playing with his watch-chain, he proceeds something in this 
fashion: "This window may justly be called the wonder of 
the world, not only for masonry but for glazing. You will ob 
6 



83 The Chapter-House in York Cathedral. 

serve that there are one hundred and seventeen portions, and 
so much of the Holy Writ is taken up thereby that you see at 
a glance a'moast the whole history of the Bible. Of the Scrip- 
ture characters the following are the principal : the Creation, 
the Temptation, the Tower of Babel, patriarchs and Moses and 
David, including Revelation. This window is 77 feet high, 32 
broad and divided into two hundred compartments about a 
yard square. John Thornton of Coventry was the glazier, and 
he begun a.d. 1405 for four shillings a week and must have it 
done inside of three years. The pay looks small, \i\x.\. you must 
remember," fixing his cold eye on me, as if I were about to for- 
get, '' that a penny then would come near buying a whole 
sheep and a shilling a whole beef." This could not hinder me, 
however, from admiring the beautiful Chapter-House, octago- 
nal in form, 63 feet in diameter and 67 feet high. Large 
windows of stained glass dating back to 1350 fill seven of the 
sides, and the whole circumference below the windows is taken 
up with forty-four canopied stone stalls for the dignitaries 
composing the chapter. These canopies are richly ornamented, 
and at the lower termination of each is a small head exquisite- 
ly carven. Some of these are sweet female faces, beaming in 
saintliness, while next one of them perhaps is the head of a 
sensual monk leering at her — all sorts of grotesque features 
being wrought in this holy place as if in mockery and satire of 
its ministers. How does it happen such imagery has place here 
and in the corbels and gargoyles of the exterior and in many 
another place all about these old churches ? Was religion in 
those centuries only half in earnest ? Was piety mingled in a 
half impious way with all manner of carnal pursuits and 
pleasures ? We are shown the statue of an archbishop here 
with a violin on his breast, in position to play, and are told that 
he was a wild boy who ran away from home with his fiddle, 
turned pirate, and after many adventures through many 
years, returned to York, became archbishop, and here he 
stands in stone, fiddle and all. 

When the building of this Cathedral, as it now stands, was 
begun in 1215, as funds were wanting, the archbishop of that 
time, Walter de Grey, a thorough worldling, granted indul- 
gences to those who would contribute, as did the then pope ; 
also to aid the work a former archbishop was canonized 
and a fame established for him as a miracle-worker of peculiar 



The Choir of the Cathedral. 83 

force, and in consequence great contributions were made by 
those flocking to his shrine. 

I cannot undertake to give an account of this great Cathe- 
dral. It was founded by King Edwin, the first Saxon king of 
Northumbria, in 627, and in the crypt we saw a piece of Saxon 
wall in what is styled herring-bone masonry, this being all that 
remains of the first structure dedicated to St. Peter. It was 
built and. rebuilt, added to and altered from that time on, the 
building as it now stands having been begun in 1215 and com- 
pleted in 1472, different parts being done by different hands ; so 
that, as the Norman style was undergoing changes through all 
these years, almost all good forms of English ecclesiastical 
architecture find their expression here. 

Jimc 16, Sunday, — Attended morning service in the Cathe- 
dral, the magnificent choir of which is fitted up with pews, 
the entrance to it being through a small arched door in the 
richly ornamented stone organ-screen. This is 25 feet in 
height, and in its fifteen niches are statues of the kings of 
England arranged in order from William I. to Henry VI., 
who was on the throne when this work was done. Most im- 
pressive on entering is the view of the lofty roof, the groined 
arches, the clustered columns and, most of all, the great east 
window. This choir by itself occupies the space of a very- 
large church. The seats are v/ell filled this morning, as the: 
ordination of some forty priests and deacons by the Arch- 
bishop, who is the Primate of England, takes place. The: 
fifty-two oaken stalls on the sides are filled this morning with, 
high-colored Yorkshire maidens and matrons in spring hats, 
and frocks, showing prettily under the dark carven can.opi.es,. 
But I could take no interest in the ceremonial, having no eyes 
or thoughts for anything but the wonderful windows with 
their old stained glass. These are the special glory of this 
minster, the original glazing existing here, it is said, to a 
greater extent than in any other church in England. Such 
marvellous purples and blues and yellows and grays combined 
with such cunning skill and infinite patience into harmonious 
and perfect forms ! Wherein lies the vast difference between 
these rich colors and the effects produced now by even the 
best modern artists ? Is the art of staining glass as it was 
done five hundred years ago here in England a lost art, or 
has time mellowed these tints through centuries of storm and. 



84 Its Stained-Glass Windows. 

sun, even as it mellows and deepens the color of all things in 
nature and in art too, not always with benefit ? In the north 
transept are five beautiful lancet windows, each one 54 feet 
high and 5^ feet wide. These are called "the Five Sisters," 
from having been presented to the minster by five sisters, 
who each wrought with her own hands the embroidered pat- 
terns for the stained-glass devices. They form the subject 
of Dickens' story of the " Five Sisters of York," in " Nicho- 
las Nickleby." 

I discovered this morning why I felt disappointed in my 
first view of the interior yesterday, in comparison with that of 
Durham. The organ stands above the rood-screen, so as to 
shut out the view of the east window and really to separate 
.the nave from the choir and destroy the effect of the great 
distance from the extreme west to the east — a considerable 
defect as it seems to me. At Durham the organ consists of 
two parts, one on each side of the choir, and the view to the 
east window not being obstructed, from the west to the east 
end is for that reason more impressive, although the nave of 
the York Minster is forty feet longer than that of Durham. 
The greatness of the parts grows on the mind like Niagara. 
But it is idle, at least for me, to attempt to describe these 
■marvels of man's hand. 

Attended evening service, but had little good in the charity 
.sermon — able and disposed for nothing but studying the win- 
dows. The sinking sun set them ablaze with emeralds, tur- 
quoises, sapphires, rubies and diamonds and made every pane 
a flashing glory. When the sun withdrew his shining, little 
jets of gas glimmered far up, circling the capitals of the lofty 
pillars ; the gorgeous hues died slowly out, Michael sheathed 
his flaming sword, his bright squadrons folded their lustrous 
■wings, the roses faded, and the ineffable glory of these win- 
dows passed into darkness, in all likelihood never to be rekin- 
dled before eyes of mine. Vale venerable minster and may 
the couplet inscribed over the door of the Chapter-House in 
Saxon letters continue to stand for many an age : 

" Ut Rosa flos florii,m 
Sic est Do?nii.s ista Domornm. ' ' 

I intended to note that in the vestry of the Cathedral, for- 
anerly called the Treasury, we were shown in an old oaken cup- 



The Curfew Bell. — Leeds. 85 

board, among other curious things, the horn of Ulphus, a great 
carved drinking-horn of ivory. Ulphus was a Saxon prince, 
who, finding his two sons on the point of quarrelling over their 
inheritance, came to York with his horn and kneeling before 
the altar in the minster, filled it with red wine and devoutly 
quaffing it — a swingeing draught it was too — gave all his lands 
and rents to God ; and the Cathedral to this day holds a very 
considerable property, by the evidence of this horn. In the 
wall of the south aisle of the choir is a tablet to the memory 
of Jane Hodson, wife of Dr. Hodson, Chancellor of the Cathe- 
dral, who died in 1636 in giving birth to her twenty-fourth 
child, she herself being in her thirty-eighth year. If one may 
judge from the troops of children everywhere, Yorkshire ma- 
trons are emulous of the patient continuance in well-doing 
exhibited by this fruitful dame of other days. 

The curfew bell is still tolled in York at eight o'clock in 
the evening from the steeple of St. Michael, a small ancient 
church ; and at 6 a.m. every morning except Sundays, after 
this bell strikes the hour it is tolled a certain number of 
times and then struck once for each day of the month already 
passed, a sum of money having been bequeathed for that pur- 
pose b)'^ a traveller who, having lost his way in the neighboring 
wood in the olden time, located himself by hearing this bell 
strike six. 

June 17. — George came to the door smiling at 9 a.m., his 
horses in good fettle, coach and harness burnished, and we 
rolled in good form out of this exceedingly interesting old city, 
stopping long enough in front of a section of the ancient wall 
to have our equipage photographed, as a token of our coach- 
ing experience, and proceeded to Leeds, twenty-six miles 
distant, passing through several small villages of no especial 
note, unless one might be Boston Spa, reputed to have a heal- 
ing spring, of which we saw nothing. Lunched at the poor- 
est wayside inn we have yet fallen on, in the poor little hamlet 
of Wetherby, it being conveniently situated half way, and at 
4 P.M. had ample solace at the excellent Queen's Hotel in 
smoky Leeds, a manufacturing town of 300,000 souls and as 
like Pittsburg as need be. Not often does the sun penetrate 
the hovering cloud of factory smoke belched from its thousand 
chimneys. 

To-day has been the warmest we have felt since landing at 



(ff> 



86 T/ie Old Coach Roads. — Sheffield. 

Queenstown, and man and beast seem to suffer and feel it as 
very hot, but it does not so affect us. As I have said before, 
the sun's rays are dulled by some property of the atmosphere, 
so that we miss the sultry glare and fierce heat of our summer 
skies at home. The country continues of the same attractive 
sort I have tried to so little purpose to describe. Fields of 
white clover studded with wild, flaring red poppies are fre- 
quent. The hawthorn hedges all along are sweet with wild 
roses, and if not "white with May" are "red with June." 
From the rose-clad cottages of the straggling villages the 
children pour out to see the passage of our coach and salute 
us with robust cheers, while their elders heed the phenomenon 
more stoically. I seem now and then, however, to notice an 
old man in these villages bring his rheumatic limbs into posi- 
tion with stiff celerity, his dull features kindling somewhat 
into a pleased expression, as if the now unusual spectacle of a 
four-in-hand had called back to his failing memory the old 
times before the railways had superseded the coaches which 
ran their regular trips on these highways, making twelve 
miles an hour, with hourly change of horses, and so doing 
a hundred miles in the daylight of each day on the through 
line from York to London if, as a handbill I saw in York, 
dated 1707, states, "God permits." All is changed now ; the 
roads are still kept in perfect condition, as if the traffic were 
likely to return any day, the ample stables of stone are in 
every village and the inns too ; but how fallen from their 
state, when the horn of the guard announced to the jolly 
landlord coachful after coachful of hungry and thirsty guests 
and the great carts which then moved all merchandise from 
point to point crowded his noisy court-yard. Then huge 
roasts smoked on the table and the ale frothed and 'twas 
merry all along these old roads. 

June 18. — Left Leeds in good condition for Sheffield, distant 
by highway thirty-two miles. The scenery grows more diver- 
sified soon after leaving Leeds and presents an agreeable 
variety of hill and dale, and the immediate neighborhood of 
Sheffield is picturesque and lovely. Twelve miles from Leeds 
we passed through Wakefield, where on a bridge over the 
Calder is a chantry, an interesting fourteenth-century relic 
of a demolished church. Lunched at Barnsley, six miles 
farther on, and found the Victoria Hotel at Sheffield an excel- 



Si'g/i^s on the Road. 87 

lent one, as are all the railway hotels where we have put 
up. Sheffield is another Leeds, only more so, grimy all over, 
a huge workshop, of nearly 300,000 inhabitants, overhung 
with a pall of dun smoke from hundreds of tall chimneys. Its 
reputation for cutlery is of old, there is a guild, the Cut- 
lers' Company, incorporated in 1624, and the office of Master 
Cutler is the highest dignity of the city. For miles before 
reaching the city we meet miners by the hundreds, returning 
to their cottages from the mines, black as negroes, and for 
the last three days have encountered along the road an in- 
creasing number of wretched tramps begging their way. We 
meet vans of showmen of all sorts, many handsomely painted, 
with little stove-pipes protruding from the roofs, smoking 
along, and clean lace curtains drawn back with red ribbons at 
the little windows — such carts as Dr. Marigold was wont to go 
about in. 

Jicne 19. — Had an uninteresting drive of eighteen miles to 
Clay Cross, half way to Derby. The whole way to Chester- 
field is lined with shabby factory villages, made hideous by 
great hills of slag and refuse from the smoking factories, spoil- 
ing a fair rural country in the way which has so wrung the 
artistic soul of Mr. Ruskin. At Chesterfield is a large and 
ancient parish church, whose tall, fluted, pointed spire is 
curiously twisted and bent to an angle of some fifteen de- 
grees. The local legend is that Satan gave it a twist in a mad 
freak, but a more prosaic explanation is that the woodwork 
within the leaden outside has yielded to the action of time. 
Lunched at Clay Cross and rode to Derby, thirty-six miles 
from Sheffield. For three miles the road runs on a narrow 
ridge dividing the landscape, which stretches away in the most 
enchanting manner on either hand. Indeed, the whole way 
this afternoon is over as fine a country as we have traversed, 
but our satisfaction has been lessened by the cloud of dust 
made by the coach and borne along with it by a following 
wind. There has been no rain now for many days, and the 
country, while not suffering, is yet quite dry. We find grow- 
ing all crops usual to our farmers in the Western States, ex- 
cept Indian corn, and all look well. Haying is just beginning, 
while wheat will certainly not be ready to harvest before the 
latter part of July. Large fields of turnips and beans are seen 
and all field crops are tended with great care. Very much of 



88 Dei'hy. — Lichfield. 

the last year's wheat all along the road is yet in the stack, being 
held for better prices. In many cases more than one year's crop 
is standing in the stack, which would be ruinous to the grain at 
home, but they make such solid stacks, almost works of art, 
and shelter them so perfectly with water-proof covers of 
thatch, sloping like roofs, that I imagine the grain keeps almost 
as well as in barns ; still, there must be some waste and dete- 
rioration by such keeping, and the loss of interest on the value 
must be added. 

At 5.30 P.M. reached the St. James', a comfortable inn at 
Derby, a well-looking town of some 90,000 inhabitants. 
It lies on the full-flowing Derwent, and is the county-town 
of Derbyshire. It was presented by William the Conqueror 
to his natural son, Peveril of the Peak, whose castle, once 
dominating the town, has entirely disappeared. It marks the 
most southerly point reached by Charles Stuart and his High- 
landers in the march to London he tried to make in 1745. 
The Midland Railway Company have works here covering two 
hundred and fifty acres, employing ten thousand men, most 
of whom I should say we met pouring out of their shops after 
working hours — a sturdy, well-looking body of workmen. The 
only building of interest to us is All Saints' Church, whose 
tower, 170 feet high, of the sixteenth century, is very hand- 
some. 

June 20. — Got off in good form at 9.30 a.m. for Lichfield, 
twenty-three miles, without stopping except once to give the 
horses each a half pail of water. George does not water his 
team during an eighteen or twenty-mile drive, saying " the 
best way is to keep water off them, for they get sickened with 
it." Whether there is anything in this vague maxim more 
than the senseless jargon of a groom I cannot say, but true it 
is that our four-in-hand are making their long steady drive in 
admirable condition. Half way lies Burton-On-Trent, where 
are the prodigious breweries of Bass and Allsop, the former 
covering one hundred and thirty acres of ground and employ- 
ing two thousand men, the latter fifteen hundred. They send 
their ales out in casks, and whoever chooses buys and bottles 
them with such name on the labels as he pleases. We get both 
as good in New York as I find them here. We have not passed 
over a richer or handsomer country than to-day. Haying is 
going on, and I should say the crop, so far as I see it, is yield- 



Lichfield Cathedral. — llie House of Dr. Johnson. 89 

ing from two and one half to three tons per acre, and wheat 
oats and barley promise well. The weather is warm and dry 
and we had some annoyance from dust. We have had fine 
strawberries now for several days, large and sweet. 

Reached the George Hotel, Lichfield, at 1.30 p.m., and found 
a batch of letters from home. No ill news, save particulars of 
the terrible catastrophe in the Conemaugh Valley. After 
luncheon visited the Cathedral, exceeding graceful and beau- 
tiful, dating from about 1250 and two hundred years building. 
It is of reddish sandstone, has borne the weather well, and 
wears a fresh, warm look. It is 408 feet long, 65 feet wide, 
and across the transepts 149 feet ; height, 60 feet ; central 
steeple, 260 feet ; those of west end 190 feet. But these cold, 
dull figures convey no notion of the harmony and grace of 
the west fagade, or the symmetrical lightness of nave and 
choir. The early English and later decorated styles are well 
shown here side by side. I can in nowise put on paper any- 
thing which will hereafter recall the picture in my mind to- 
night of this exquisite church, which surpasses in certain 
essential features of beauty any one I have yet seen. The 
choir-stalls are modern, exquisitely carved and all done by 
Thomas Evans, of Elliston, a brother of George Eliot. The 
apse is polygonal, with glorious stained glass, three hundred 
and fifty years old, brought from a convent in Liege. Fine, 
too, is the Chapter-House, octagonal, with a ribbed roof sup- 
ported by a central arch. Above is the Diocesan Library, 
where I specially noted with rankling envy an illuminated 
manuscript of Chaucer's " Canterbury Tales," done about 
1400, and a Saxon copy of the Gospels (St. Chad's Gospels), 
not later than 700, easily worth its weight in gold ; also a copy 
of South's Sermons belonging to Dr. Johnson, the margins of 
the leaves all the way through being marked in an uncouth 
way with various signs, evidently having significance to him. 
The Cathedral is dedicated to St. Chad, the patron saint of 
Lichfield, of some 8000 souls — a city because of its Cathedral, 
while Leeds, lacking that ornament, with its population of over 
300,000 is only a town. 

Dr. Johnson was born here in a house still standing in good 
preservation fronting the market square, with a bill of sale in 
the window. It is a wide three-story house of stuccoed brick, 
and shows well now even in this well-built town, and when the 



90 Three Crowns Inn. — Coventry. 

Doctor first saw the light in it, must have ranked among the 
best houses. A huge and not quite pleasing statue of him 
stands in the square just in front of the house, representing 
him seated, intent upon a folio volume in his hand. The fea- 
tures in this effigy and in the bust in the Cathedral are lighter 
and finer than in the engravings I have been used to see of 
him. Went into the Three Crowns Inn, the house next his 
birthplace, where he entertained Boswell when they visited 
Lichfield together in 1776; and here it was that the "sage" 
after a " comfortable supper" gave expression to his encomium 
of his townspeople, that they " are the most sober, decent 
people in England, are the genteelest in proportion to their 
wealth, and speak the purest English." How easy it is to 
speak well of our neighbors after supper, and take most of it 
back next morning ! Was shown into a comfortable room to 
the rear of the bar, where the landlady said the Doctor used 
to sit, and she had the nerve to point out a chair which she 
said he used. And why not? I sat down in it in full faith 
and partook of a " light collation" in the form of a glass of 
Lichfield brewed ale, not very good, but I called to mind that 
the Doctor was not particular in his eating and drinking and 
so fared very well. The George Hotel, where we remain until 
to-morrow, is said to be the scene of Farquhar's " Beaux Strat- 
agem." 

Jutie 21. — Left Lichfield at 10 a.m. for Coventry, twenty- 
eight miles distant, and tried to lunch at the Swan in Foleshill, 
probably the dirtiest village tavern in all this land. But the 
country all along our road to-day is most fair and fertile and 
the whole drive delightful. Before reaching Coventry we re- 
mind ourselves that hereabouts are the localities where George 
Eliot passed her early years, and that on the Foleshill road, 
some five miles to the north of Coventry, stands the house 
where she lived with her father before his death. Not know- 
ing just how far we might be from this house and having 
found that those one meets on the road never, by any chance, 
know anything of the neighborhood where they live, outside 
the radius of five miles at the most, I got down at the post- 
office in the rustic village of Meriden and inquired of the 
middle-aged postmistress if she knew anything of the house 
where Mr. Evans, the father of George Eliot, lived. With her 
was a young lady of some twenty years, quite a bright, intel- 



The Three Tall Spires of Coventry. — St. Marys Guildhall. 91 

ligent-looking girl, and neither one had ever heard of George 
Eliot and knew nothing about the place I wanted ; yet, as we 
found after reaching Coventry, it could not have been more 
than a mile away. Arbury Farm and Griff, where she passed 
the first twenty years of her life, are between Coventry and 
Nuneaton, some ten miles to the north. 

Coventry is an ancient city of some 45,000 inhabitants, where 
the old and new are blended in a pleasant way, the modern 
buildings being of a good sort and the old ones quaint and 
interesting. The streets are mostly narrow, crooked and 
winding, and every once in a while one comes on a timbered 
house overhanging the street, venerable with its three hundred 
years. We are well received at the Queen's, an exceedingly 
comfortable hotel, and engaging a landau, visit the sights of 
the town, which Falstaff was ashamed to march through with 
his ragged regiment, and where, according to the legend ver- 
sified but not verified by Tennyson, Lady Godiva won the 
freedom of the city from her nice husband, in the eleventh cen- 
tury, by fulfilling what he thought an impossible condition 
which he had imposed. As the condition was that she should 
ride naked through the town on horseback in broad daylight, 
it did seem unlikely this lady would comply; but she did 
make the ride, " clothed on with chastity" and a full head of 
long hair, all the citizens shutting themselves up in their 
houses save " Peeping Tom," who is shown high up on a cor- 
ner house in a red collar, green sleeves and blue cap, a sorry 
spectacle for all virtuous folk to hiss at. But my lord was as 
good as his word and set the city free in these words : " I Lu- 
richi for the love of thee doe make Coventrie tol-free," and it 
is to be hoped never suggested to his lady such an act of self- 
sacrifice again. 

St. Michael's Church, built of red sandstone, is a noble 
building with a beautiful spire 300 feet high — and I mean 
all that is implied in the word beautiful when a spire is 
spoken of, me judice ; Trinity Church also has a fine spire, 237 
feet high ; and these with that of the old Greyfriars Mon- 
astery make " the three tall spires" of Coventry. Very inter- 
esting to me also is St. Mary's Guildhall, a piece of municipal 
architecture of the fourteenth century, with the great kitchen 
and the mayoress' parlor, and chiefly for its great hall with a 
large window of old glass at one end and pointed narrow ones 



92 Kenilworth Castle and Us History. 

high up on the sides, the oaken roof with carved beams, its 
tapestry, its suits of Cromwellian armor and a carved oak seat 
used by Henry VI. when holding parliament here, which, 
could I set it down in the hall of 64 Remsen Street, I would 
make the occasion of a festival and ask a houseful of friends 
to come and see and admire and envy me the possession of. 
This is the hall described by George Eliot — who attended 
school here — as the scene of Hetty's trial in her novel of " Adam 
Bede." 

Drove to Rosehill, " Ivy Cottage," close to the city, where 
Mr. and Mrs. Bray lived, the long friends of George Eliot, 
where she often visited. Mrs. Bray is still living, over eighty 
years old, but hale and hearty. Her husband, at one time a 
prosperous manufacturer of ribbons, failed in business and 
Mrs. Bray subsists on the income of one hundred pounds per 
annum provided by George Eliot. After dinner I walked 
about the streets for an hour, going into the court-yard of 
Bablake Hospital, built in the sixteenth century, well pre- 
served and pleasing, and Ford's Hospital, of the same period, 
equally so. 

I like Coventry ; its situation is pleasant and it wears a 
cheerful look. George remarked as we approached it that it 
had a ''squandered" look, by which I found that he meant it 
covered a good deal of ground. We have here as good straw- 
berries as I ever ate. big and luscious. 

June 22. — Drove to Kenilworth, five miles, over a charming 
country. The castle here is a ruin, but a noble one, well in- 
dicating its former magnificence. There was a castle here 
from very early times and it played all along an important 
part in English history. By the marriage of Blanche, daughter 
of Henry of Lancaster, to John of Gaunt, son of Edward III., 
and soon after created Duke of Lancaster, it became greatly 
enlarged and enriched, as the fine remains of the banqueting 
hall he built still attest. At his death Richard II. seized it 
from his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, who recovered it when he 
became king as Henry IV. Henry VIII. repaired it largely, 
and Elizabeth, early in her reign, gave it to Robert Dudley, 
son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, whom she 
created Earl of Leicester. He expended a prodigious sum 
upon it, and in July, 1575, entertained Queen Elizabeth here 
in the magnificent style described by Scott in the notes to his 



Warivick. — The ''Twelve Poor Brothers:' 93 

novel of '' Kenilworth," which moving tale has thrown a 
glamour over all the scene. The Earl of Leicester left Kenil- 
worth by his will to his brother Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, for 
his life ; next to Sir Robert Dudley, Knight, his son by Lady 
Douglas Sheffield, daughter of Lord Howard of Effingham, 
whom Leicester had secretly married but never owned as his 
wife, having in her lifetime married the Lady Lettice, Countess 
of Essex. Sir Robert could not or rather was not allowed to 
establish his legitimacy, and by a series of sharp practices 
Charles I. acquired it. Then came Cromwell and his Puritans 
and ruined it, as they did most of the venerable buildings 
throughout the kingdom ; then the Restoration, when the 
lands and ruins of Kenilworth were granted to a Hyde, and by 
marriage of a female descendant they passed to Thomas 
Villiers, Baron Hyde, afterward Earl of Clarendon, one of 
whose descendants with that title still owns them ; and a lib- 
eral gentleman must he be, protecting the ruins by constant 
repairs in excellent taste, as it seems to me, and freely admit- 
ting all the world to roam about at pleasure for threepence a 
head. 

Drove on to Warwick through a most lovely and fertile 
country, getting glimpses of Wootton Court and farther on of 
Guy's Cliff, the charming home of Miss Bertie Percy, and " put 
up" for lunch at the Warwick Arms, clean and good. This is 
a quaint old town situated on high ground near the Avon. 
Drove to the Hospital of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, an 
exceedingly interesting pile of old buildings in timber and 
plaster established by Lord Dudley for " twelve poor brothers" ■ 
in 1571, although the buildings themselves are said to be con- 
siderably older. The quadrangle is very picturesque, and in 
the various rooms are many rare and curious relics of armor 
and furniture, one being a Saxon chair said to be one thou- 
sand years old, and a rich bit of embroidery by Amy Robsart. 
The Spanish chestnut beams of the old dining-room look 
perfectly fresh. The endowment is sufficient to have kept 
here in comfort now for three hundred and fifty years twelve 
worthy indigent persons chosen from the neighborhood, with 
certain conditions. They wear always when abroad a livery 
of a handsome blue broadcloth gown with a silver badge of a 
bear and a ragged staff, Lord Leicester's crest. The_ badges, 
all but one, are those worn by the first brethren, whose names 



94 Warwick Castle and its Treasures. 

with the date 15 71 are engraved on the back. The pensioner 
who showed us about said he had been here forty-four years 
and still looked a tough old boy with a good deal of wear in 
him. A man might be much worse off than a poor brother 
here and I do not pity them. 

Thence to Warwick Castle, standing on a commanding 
height, about whose base the Avon winds. The. view from a 
bridge just below the walls and a nearer one from the site of 
an old mill up to the dizzy summits of the towers and along 
the stretch of the lofty walls are most impressive and realize 
one's ideal of a feudal castle. The avenue leading to the outer 
court is cut through solid rock, and we come into the beautiful 
inner court with its velvety turf through a double gateway be- 
tween the "Caesar Tower" and "Guy's," the latter 128 feet 
high. Caesar's Tower is the oldest portion, nearly 150 feet 
high, and dates almost back to the Norman Conquest. The 
interior of the castle is shown in part to visitors on payment of 
one shilling, and I wish to say once for all that I think it a 
most handsome and generous thing for the gentlemen owning 
the priceless treasures of these old hereditary homes to open 
them to the public and to have in charge, as in this instance, 
courteous and well-informed servitors to point out and explain 
the rare objects which crowd the great rooms. I can give no 
idea of the treasures of armor and pictures in the great en- 
trance hall, 60 feet long, 40 feet wide, 39 high. It is said that 
there is no such private collection of armor in Europe. The 
model of a horse is completely covered with the defensive armor 
Scott so loves to describe and on it a knight armed cap-a-pie in 
a magnificent suit of plate-armor. The guide told a curious 
incident of these. In a fire in this room in 1871 some of the 
armor became much injured and the defensive armor of this 
horse was replaced with a suit obtained by the present earl's 
agent, after much search, in Germany. When it was being 
put in place and the rider mounted it was found by private 
marks on the suits that they were originally intended for each 
other. The state-rooms, thrown open as we saw them, dis- 
close a vista over 300 feet long and are filled with amazing 
treasures of pictures, cabinets, furniture, china, etc. There 
are, for instance, sixteen portraits by Van Dyck, including his 
" Charles I. ;" nine by Rubens, including his full-length por- 
trait of Ignatius Loyola, and a pair of lions, said to be the only 



The Church of St. Mary. — Stratford-on-Avon. 95 

picture of animals he ever painted ; Raphael's "Assumption 
of the Virgin," Godfrey Kneller's "Queen Anne," Holbein's 
" Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn," Teniers' " Card-Players," and 
a multitude of. others. There is in one of the rooms a mask of 
Cromwell's face taken soon after death, which fully justifies 
the worst his enemies have said of his appearance, with its long 
square chin, massive jaws, coarse wide mouth, huge ugly nose, 
and low, bony, retreating forehead, like an African's — the face 
of a coarse bigot. 

The celebrated Warwick vase, found in Hadrian's Villa at 
Tivoli, stands in a place of honor in the conservatory fronting 
the castle and is shown and described ad nauseam by a weari- 
some commissionaire until one wishes him drowned in the 
huge sculptured marble bowl of it. 

These magnificent treasures are the accumulations of cen- 
turies by the great family of the Grevilles, the first of whom, 
born in 1554, was a cousin of Sir Philip Sidney, with whom he 
was educated. The present Earl, George Guy Greville, was 
born 1818. He has been very ill here for some weeks now, 
and has just gone to London, and has afforded us an enter- 
tainment I shall not soon forget. 

The Church of St. Mary here has a fine chapel. Beau- 
champ — pronounced here Beecham — with fine old windows and 
carved oak seats, a rich and handsome monument to its 
builder, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who died in 
1464. There is another to the favorite of Queen Elizabeth, 
the Earl of Leicester, who entertained her so famously at 
Kenilworth. He lies here clad in armor, his wife the Coun- 
tess Lettice beside him in her robes of a peeress — both com- 
fortable effigies and looking better content with each other 
than they were supposed to be in life. An inscription by 
the countess, who survived him, states that " his most sorrow- 
ful wife, through a sense of conjugal love and fidelity, hath 
put up this monument to the best and dearest of husbands !" 
What lies are told by very nice people — on tombstones ! 

Drove to Stratford-on-Avon and have very pleasant rooms 
at the Red Horse, with a bay-window in our sitting-room. 
The country between here and Warwick is most fertile and 
charming, and we can hardly hope for a more agreeable ride 
than this has been in the cool of the cloudy afternoon amid 
sights and sounds of a June landscape, sweet as famed Area- 



96 CJiurch of the Holy Trinity, Shakespere' s Church. 

dia. As we approach Stratford, we follow the southern 
boundary-wall of Charlecote Park, fair to see from our coach- 
top, with its verdant lawns spotted with numerous deer, and 
have a good view of the old red brick Elizabethan house, still 
occupied by a descendant and namesake of the Lucy family. 
When Shakespere was a youth here the story is that he was 
brought up before Sir Hugh Lucy for deer-stealing and that 
he afterward took his revenge by making him the " Justice 
Shallow" whom Falstaff visited on his way to Shrewsbury. 
A likely enough tradition : why not ? Stratford is a clean, 
pretty town of some 8000 inhabitants, with wide streets and 
substantial modern buildings mingled with quaint old timber 
and plaster houses of two and three centuries ago. Its busi- 
ness seems to be chiefly Shakespere and all departments seem 
working successfully. 

June 23, Sunday. — Our hotel has the room where Washing- 
ton Irving wrote his paper on Stratford-on-Avon. The chair 
he sat in is kept locked in a glass cupboard, and the poker he 
used to stir the fire while meditating is done up in a worsted 
case. Attended morning service at the Church of the Holy 
Trinity — Shakespere's church — a much handsomer, larger and 
more imposing building than I had supposed. It dates back to 
the fifteenth century, has a lofty spire and is charmingly situ- 
ated directly on the Avon among fine old trees, an avenue of 
overarching limes leading to the west entrance being specially 
noticeable. The services were held in the nave. Some changes 
are going on in the interior, so that a scaffolding shut off the 
choir. The congregation was large, decent, dull and homely. 
There is no access to the chancel on Sunday ; so after ser- 
vice we strolled through the grassy churchyard and returned 
by the site of New Place, the house Shakespere bought when 
he retired from London and where he lived until his death. 
The house, one of the finest in town after he had altered 
it over to suit him, was razed to the ground in 1759 by the 
Rev. Francis Gastrell, who had come into possession of it in 
1753, because he was compelled to pay the monthly assess- 
ments for the maintenance of the poor of Stratford. He dis- 
posed of the materials and left the town for good. Three 
years before he had cut down the mulberry-tree behind the 
house planted by the poet's own hand, then remarkably large 
and fine, because he was troubled by visitors desirous of see- 



New Place, the House of Shake spere. 97 

ing it. For these impious deeds may dogs dishonor the grave 
where his body lies ; may his spirit, harder than adamant, be 
condemned to wander until it relent and soften, in a hot and 
thirsty land where no shade is, its weeping eyes tortured with 
the far-away sight of an unattainable mulberry-tree, with its 
phantom whisperings of cooling shadow ever in its ears ; 
may — 

With the house Shakespere bought about one hundred and 
twenty-five acres of land extending in orchard and meadow 
down to the Avon, on the greater part of which are now well- 
built streets. But a portion nearest the site of the house in 
the rear is now a public garden, and the spot where the house 
stood and the house next it, together with the Birthplace, 
were purchased in 1847 with funds raised by public subscrip- 
tion, and are under the control of trustees. This garden is open 
on Sundays only from 2 to 6 p.m., and after an early dinner we 
strolled there. By chance the custodian of the New Place, a ge- 
nial-looking matron, was walking in the grounds, and although 
visitors are not admitted on Sunday, she kindly noticed us 
near the gate separating the grounds from the public garden, 
came forward and admitted us to the ample corner lot where 
the house once stood. The space is say 60 by 150 feet, 
covered with greensward, nicely tended, and surrounded by 
a handsome iron railing. The outlines of the foundations of 
the outer walls are preserved by enclosing the space of their 
thickness in lines of brickwork level with the ground, the de- 
pressed space within showing pieces of the old stone broken and 
lying loose. The old well which supplied thehouse with drink- 
ing-water stood in the cellar and is now curbed and overgrown 
with ivy. We drank from it and found it clear and cold. The 
remains of the bay-window are pointed out where he sat 
when he wrote "The Tempest." A little back of this is a 
flourishing mulberry-tree, a scion of the old one. We were 
shown into the adjoining house which connected with Shake- 
spere's and was occupied in his time by Mr. Nash, whose 
son afterward married Shakespere's grand-daughter Elizabeth, 
daughter of Mrs. Hall. Within the Nash house are shown 
many articles in some way connected with the great poet. 
What struck me most was the " shuffle-board,"' a long table 
from the Falcon Tavern on the opposite corner, where he used 
to drop in for a game. 
7 



98 Shakespere's Grave. — His Bust. 

Strolled in the pleasant gardens connected with the Me- 
morial Buildings lying along the Avon. These buildings in- 
clude a pretty theatre and a handsome library, including many 
editions of Shakespere's plays and many interesting portraits 
of actors, the interiors being much better than the external 
appearance of the structures gives promise of. All these were 
paid for by subscriptions, and handsome mention should be 
made of the statue of Shakespere with the striking figures of 
Falstaff, Lady Macbeth, Hamlet and Prince Henry at its base, 
the gift of Lord Ronald Levison Gower. 

Jttne 24. — Our coach returns to Edinburgh this morning, 
leaving us to get to London as best we may. We are sorry 
to part with it. We have lived two happy weeks on the top 
of it. George is a good fellow and capital coachman. We 
have not met the slightest mishap since the first day out, when 
one horse fell dead of heart disease, and not any rain to drive 
us inside. It could not have been better. Nor should the 
guard, "Alec," be passed over without a good word, sitting 
stiff as a ramrod all day long, his face burned to peeling — we 
are all well tanned for that matter — attentive, civil, prompt, 
just what we would have him. They both seemed sorry to 
leave us. We should have kept on to Oxford as intended, but 
could not get rooms there this week as I had hoped to do. 

Directly after breakfast went to the church and straight 
into the chancel, on the north side of which is Shakespere's 
grave. The flat slab over it contains nothing but the verse 
invoking a curse on whoever shall disturb the bones of the 
sleeper below. On his right hand and filling the space between 
his grave and the wall is the grave of Anne Hathaway, his 
wife, who survived him nearly eight years ; on his left hand 
lie the remains of Thomas Nash, who married his grand- 
daughter Elizabeth ; next. Dr. Hall, and on his left his wife 
Susannah, Shakespere's eldest daughter. These graves are 
within the sanctuary, reached by two steps up from the pave- 
ment of the nave. I should certainly say the slabs over them 
are not the original ones but others, recut later. They are in 
the most honorable and sacred part of the church, and with 
the bust in its position of honor on the north wall just above 
these graves, sufficiently attest the high social position held 
by the families of Shakespere and Hall. The well-known 
bust executed soon after his death by Gerard Johnson in- 
terested me greatly. It was ordered and put in place by the 



His Birthplace. — The Stratford Portrait. 99 

Halls. Dr. Hall was a physician of good standing, an author 
of repute, of excellent social position, and it is a very reason- 
cible supposition that the bust, executed and put in place at 
so considerable an expense, would be as good a likeness as 
could be had, certainly that it would be satisfactory to his near 
relatives. The bust was cut from a fine sandstone and the 
features painted to resemble life — the cheeks florid, the eyes 
a light hazel, the hair and beard auburn. Malone in 1793 had 
the whole whitewashed, but many years ago this was removed 
by a chemical process bringing the original colors to view. 
The face is strong and handsome, indicating a large, vigorous 
physique well nourished, a joyous, open nature, while the 
dome of the forehead, the broad brow and the large, full eyes 
in their capacious cavities, betoken a sensitive and ample soul. 
The bust is certainly authentic and genuine. I am not aware 
that so much can surely be said of any other portrait or 
effigy of any sort claiming to be a likeness. 

From the church we went to the house known as the Birth- 
place. This house has undergone many changes and resto- 
rations, so that one cannot feel much certainty about the 
apartments. The plan of the house is pretty certainly the 
same, and it all looks ancient enough to be the poet's birth- 
place. The timber framework is no doubt the same and the 
recent restoration aimed to reproduce the house as it stood in 
1564. The room where he is supposed to have been born is 
shown, and about the different rooms are many interesting 
articles, more or less authentic, associated with him. Most 
interesting tome is the so-called "Stratford portrait," care- 
fully kept in an iron safe hung up against the wall, the doors 
of which are kept swung open during the day, to allow its 
being seen. This shows the poet in the same dress as the 
bust in the church. This portrait is a very interesting one, 
and while the expression of the features varies from that of 
the bust, there is, on the whole, a striking resemblance. It 
belonged to the Clopton family. Sir Hugh Clopton built the 
house about the year 1530, which Shakespere bought when he 
returned to Stratford to live, also the fine bridge over the 
Avon, and he and other members of the family lie buried in 
the church. Nothing is more likely than that this family 
should have been on intimate terms with Shakespere, have 
admired his genius and have possessed a portrait of him. 

This is, of course, an exceedingly interesting spot, but the me- 



100 Drive to Shottery and See Anne Hathaway' s Cottage. 

chanical garrulity of the attendants and the busy stir of a throng 
of sight-seers of all ages go far to quench such glow of sen- 
timent as might naturally warm one's fancy shut up alone in 
the quaint old walls. There is a considerable garden attached 
where for a long time such flowers as Shakespere mentions in 
his plays were cultivated, but this pleasing practice has been 
discontinued. 

Drove to Shottery, one mile from town. Here is Anne 
Hathaway's cottage standing as it did when Shakespere came 
here a-courting and even more interesting as an old house 
than the Birthplace, because of its perfect preservation in its 
condition of three hundred years ago. The family room with 
its small lead-glazed window-panes and the deep-sunk chim- 
ney with seats inside is unchanged from the time when the 
boy Shakespere sat here beside the "fair Anne Hathaway," 
some eight years older than himself, he being eighteen. By 
the way, a curious question has arisen as to whether Anne, 
who survived her husband seven years, was married a second 
time. The entry in the parish register stands just as below : 

[" 1623 ,' Mrs. Shakespere, 

Aug. 8. ; Ajina Uxor Richardi Jaines"^ 

This entry, although included in brackets, probably means two 
different persons buried on the same day, for the inscription 
on her stone is this : " Here lyeth interred the body of Anne, 
wife of William Shakespere, who dpted this life the 5th day of 
Aug., 1623, being of the age of 67 years ;" still the entry is un- 
usual and careless in either case. The old lady having care of 
the cottage is a descendant of the Hathaways — a Mrs. Baker. 
The garden in front is now blooming with old-fashioned flow- 
ers, from which the kindly old woman culled us each a nose- 
gay- 
Noticed in town a handsome old half-timbered house where 
John Harvard, founder of Harvard College, married his wife. 
It bears the date 1596. Looked into the quaint old building 
where the grammar-school founded by Edward VI, is still 
maintained. The master politely showed us the room where 
Shakespere attended school as a boy — his desk is shown at 
the Birthplace — and the small ancient hall where very likely 
he was wont to see the players in their visits to Stratford. 
June 25. — Went to the church and again carefully looked at 



London. — Chelsea. — The House in which Carlyle Died. 101 

the bust. My previous favorable impressions are confirmed. 
Walked through the still churchyard on close-shaven turf of 
deepest green, studded with great roses flaming with June, to 
the eastern end of the church separated from the poet's grave 
only by the chancel-wall, and looked across the brimming 
Avon, lingering here without noise, upon a broad meadow 
odorous with its freshly cut grass. Beyond, still other smooth, 
fertile fields, then gentle swells of rich and quiet landscape — 
a picture of joyous tranquillity. Just then from the untedded 
swaths of meadow-grass rose first one lark, then another, both 
mounting skyward on waves of their own song. Other tuneful 
birds were not wanting in tree and hedge, and all nature seemed 
interfused with the cheerful spirit of the Master Soul of all 
the world of men. 

Left at twelve noon by rail for London, passing through 
Banbury, Oxford, Reading, with many a fair view along the 
slender stream of the upper Thames, and at 4 p.m. reached 
our rooms at the Metropole, engaged with difficulty by a friend 
on the spot, who informs me he never knew London so full as 
now. 

June 26. — Took a hansom and made several calls. These 
hansoms furnish a very quick, cheap and comfortable way 
of getting about. The magnitude and ponderosity of this 
enormous city oppress me and I feel quite helpless to strug- 
gle with it. Hired a landau with driver in livery — a hand- 
some turnout — for regular use during our stay here. P.M. 
drove about the city and at the fashionable hour, 5.30 to 7, in 
Hyde Park — a crowded scene of wealth and luxury in dress 
and equipage. Received calls from friends in the evening. 

June 27. — Passed the morning with family in shopping ; even- 
ing to see " Macbeth" at the Lyceum Theatre. Had stall-seats 
corresponding to the parquette-seats at home. These run in 
unbroken rows across the full width of the theatre, and are 
reached by narrow and not very pleasant passages along the 
first tier, from which stairs go down to their level. The audi- 
torium is of about the size of the best New York theatres, with 
rich, unobtrusive ornamentation. I never saw any play so su- 
perbly mounted nor so poor a Macbeth as Mr. Irving. 

June 28. — Drove down to Chelsea to see the house where 
Carlyle lived so long and where he died. The number is 24 
Cheyne Row, changed from No. 5. There is a bust of him on 



102 Westminster Abbey. 

the front wall, and the present owner, Mrs. Cottrell, is an old 
friend. It is an English basement house, say twenty feet wide 
and three stories high, with a deep garden in the rear. He died in 
the second-story front room, a good-sized, pleasant apartment. 
The street is not less than thirty feet wide, and, while humble, is 
not mean nor specially unpleasant. It abuts on the Thames 
embankment, which has been improved along here since his 
time, I believe. Crossed the Thames by the Albert Suspen- 
sion Bridge, and drove along Battersea Park — finely laid out 
and admirably kept — and returned by the Vauxhall Bridge. 

Jitne 29. — Drove to Spurgeon's church, on the Surrey side, to 
get passes for morning service to-morrow. It is in a poorish 
neighborhood, much like that of Atlantic Avenue and the 
streets south of it in Brooklyn. Returned by London Bridge, 
on which the traffic is enormous. Passed all the morning 
until one o'clock in Westminster Abbey. I shall attempt no 
description of this great minster, where those whom England 
has held in most reverence and love for a thousand years 
lie buried or have the honor of a bust or tablet or some form 
of lasting remembrance. There are costly monuments to 
a good many nobodies, and men, women and children one 
would not expect to find honored here, while so many names 
one readily recalls are overlooked, but the vast abbey is the 
worthy home of much of the world's departed greatness. The 
structure, as a whole, does not impress me with the solemn 
awe of Durham or York Cathedrals, but neither of these 
approach the richness of many of the different parts, and the 
tracery of the roof is beautiful, beyond anything we have 
seen. In the Baptistery I had a little shock at seeing halfway 
up the lofty wall a long brass tablet bearing the inscription, 

" D.D. Georgius Gitlielnius Childs, Civis Americanus •" 

for when I left my native land this eminent Philadelphia phil- 
anthropist was heartily above ground, and from his habits 
of total abstinence from all forms of vicious indulgence, likely 
to continue so for many good years to come, let us hope. But 
I soon recajled that having much in common and greatly 
sympathizing with those tender and sensitive souls, George 
Herbert and William Cowper, he has filled two windows above 
his name with stained glass in their honor, and sought to veil 
his part in the beautiful work by using the dead language of 



Hear Mr. Spurgeon Preach. 103 

the ancient Romans in the modest inscription. There is a 
good bust of Longfellow in a good place, and I was pleased 
to notice a fresh white rose on his breast, put there, it may be, 
by the loving hand of one of his own countrywomen. Dick- 
ens' plain slab is above his grave in the very best part of the 
Poets' Corner, while the handsome busts of Thackeray and 
Macaulay are rather overshadowed by the fine full-length 
statue of Addison, a little behind which they stand. 

In the evening witnessed a performance of " Lohengrin" at 
Covent Garden, the Royal Italian Opera House. Had stall- 
seats, one guinea each. This opera house is not quite so large 
as the New York Academy of Music in Fourteenth Street, and 
is comfortable, but plain. There are four tiers of boxes running 
entirely round it. Full dress is de rtgueur, and the show of 
bare arms and necks, both in stalls and boxes, quite imposing 
and a little startling ; but we are working toward the same at 
home. There w^ere many fine toilets and a rich show of dia- 
monds, but I should say that neither the house itself nor audi- 
ence nor the performance at all surpassed what our own Met- 
ropolitan can show in a good season. The exclusion of ladies' 
hats — this is done at the Lyceum Theatre also — gives a hand- 
some drawing-room appearance to the auditorium, saying 
nothing of the comfort and convenience of the spectators, and 
we might well imitate this excellent fashion. At the rising of 
the curtain scarcely a box was occupied, nor were they filled 
until the second act was well begun. 

June 30, Sunday. — Drove over Blackfriars Bridge to the Surrey 
side to hear the famous Mr. Spurgeon preach. I was furnished 
with little envelope tickets on which was printed a request 
that the holder would put into them a contribution for the 
work of the church. These admitted us at the entrance for 
pew-holders, so that we were not compelled to wait outside 
until these were seated, but were shown into good seats well 
forward in the vast, plain building, which easily accommodates 
five thousand, and can, under stress, hold seven thousand. 
Pretty nearly the former number were present this morning. 
Two wide galleries run entirely round the deep hall, well 
lighted and ventilated. At the end opposite the entrances is 
a raised platform some six feet high, railed about and occupied 
by a miscellaneous thirty or so of young and old men, 
among whom I noticed one reporter and a precentor who sought 



104 A Description of the Great Preacher. 

to lead the congregational singing — there is no organ or 
other instrument of music. Six feet above this, on a level with 
the first gallery, is a smaller semicircular platform, railed in 
and reached on each side by a flight of steps from the ground 
floor and also from the level of the gallery behind it, and 
furnished with a little table and chair. 

Precisely at eleven o'clock there walked heavily, limping 
a little as it seemed, down from the inclined plane of the 
lower gallery a short, stoutish, solid man with much the 
appearance of a substantial farmer, and took his seat in the 
chair on the upper platform. Mr. Spurgeon has a softer 
face than his portraits show ; still his features are somewhat 
coarse and dull, his forehead is low, his eyes full, his iron- 
gray hair thick on his head, with full brown whiskers a little 
streaked with gray, cut rather close, open a little on the chin, 
without mustache. His stubby hands are red and look as if he 
used them in labor, and his physique and manner suggest Mr. 
Beecher, although his face to-day neither showed the animal 
force of Mr. Beecher's when at rest nor its spiritual exaltation 
when wrought upon by the fire of the inner spirit. But any- 
thing like resemblance ceases here. Spurgeon's voice is an 
admirable one, both soft and strong, and perfectly under his 
control. Some years ago I read a volume of his sermons and 
tried to see wherein lies the secret of his power. That will 
be found in the man himself, for his personal magnetism is 
extraordinary and of the same kind I sometimes felt in hearing, 
in the new West, those spiritual pioneers put into those rough 
fields by the Methodist Church known as presiding elders, so- 
called, who with plain and forcible natural gifts trained by 
constant contact with natural men in the deep forests and on 
the broad prairies, where God seems most present, were able 
to move the heart beyond the arts of the most accomplished 
orators. So with Spurgeon, whose city life seems to have had 
no effect on his mind or person, as he steps into his pulpit a 
natural man with God's message, as if he had received it 
direct in the desert and could not rest until he had come forth 
and declared it. He sinks himself and in plainest speech utters 
it from the heart of him, not without a certain force of high 
imagination, almost always belonging to such men. He is a 
powerful man far beyond what I had understood, and has 
none of the tricks of manner or speech usual with popular 



The National Gallery. — Hyde Park. 105 

preachers. The vast audience was greatly moved and swayed 
by him, and while I do not hold the faith he professes, I do 
declare that I far prefer his methods and gospel to the 
mediaeval ceremonies and perfunctory worship we have at- 
tended in the great churches of the Established Church since 
we came to this country. May he live long and prosper ! 

July I. — Passed the morning in the National Gallery and 
saw great store of great pictures by masters of the Italian, 
Flemish and Dutch schools, leaving the others for a future 
visit. Here for the first time do I see at their best the famous 
painters whose works hand them down to fame in all time. 
How well deserving, as it seems to me, they are — Fra Angelico, 
Leonardo da Vinci, del Sarto, Dolci, Raphael, Correggio, 
Pellegrino, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Salvator Rosa, Titian, 
Velasquez, Van Dyck and so many more, but chiefest, thou, 
great Rembrandt! 

Evening drove in Hyde Park, and am more and more im- 
pressed with the display of wealth and magnificence made 
here in this heart of the world. A single one of the equipages 
here would attract attention in any one of our great parks, 
and there are literally thousands like the best of ours rolling 
along in an endless tide. It is hard, when mingled in it, to 
believe that there can be want and misery anywhere in the 
world, so profuse and prodigal is the show of wealth and 
pomp. We managed to cut quite a respectable figure in our 
hired landau, with a well-stepping pair of handsome bays and 
coachman in brave livery, with the regulation purple cheeks. 

July 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. — These days include one " event," the re- 
gattas or rowing matches at Henley, thirty-five miles up the 
Thames, for which we left London by rail at 5 p.m. on 
Tuesday. We were met at Henley Station by a London friend, 
through whose thoughtful kindness and the exceeding hospi- 
tality of his family we were enabled to witness the whole three 
days' pageant in the most agreeable circumstances. We were 
driven to the mansion of Lord Camoys, which, with three 
thousand acres of the estate, is rented by our host for a 
summer residence, during a term of years. Just such a 
house I have always desired to visit. Parts of it are more 
than five hundred years old. It is of brick, the main part 
having a front of at least 100 feet, with two wings of half that 
length, and at the end of one of them an old chapel of stone, 



106 The Henley Regattas. 

with windows of stained glass, where a priest of the Roman 
Catholic Church daily officiates, the Camoys family being of 
that faith. Within are intricate arched passages leading into 
all sorts of quaint rooms with high-arched windows, a honey- 
comb of entanglements, where it is easy and pleasant to be- 
come lost and most natural to meet any description of ghosts, 
especially as the walls are hung with ancestral portraits run- 
ning back for centuries, and of a diversity able to supply any 
species of ghost, from a turbaned warrior, glaring fiercely out 
of his frame from behind a pair of tremendous mustachios, to 
the peach-tinted maiden in her teens, with arched eyebrows and 
decorous curls, smiling now for these hundred years in a fade- 
less frock of white. There is a secret door and passage from 
one of the sleeping-rooms, said to lead by a subterranean way 
to a neighboring wood, useful in the troublous times of the 
Pretender, when arms were hidden here and robed priests 
came and went stealthily on unlawful errands. There are a 
large, fine library stored with books gathered during many 
centuries, a drawing-room of admirable proportions, alto- 
gether a house to see, to feel and to remember. We were 
four of sixteen guests, all cared for — such is the admirable 
domestic management in this great house — as if each were the 
only one. 

Next morning all driven five miles to the "house-boat" 
of mine host, at Henley. This is a flat-bottomed boat 
some fifty feet long, with a well-appointed cabin and caboose, 
with a flat roof over all, railed about and furnished with seats, 
shaded with awnings, decorated with flags and flowers, where 
sixty people can have comfortable stations, looking on the 
river from a height of fifteen feet. Similar boats to the "lone" 
were moored side by side, nearly touching each other close to 
the shore on one side of the Thames, here flowing with 
a scarcely perceptible current some thirty rods wide, forming 
a fine rowing course of a mile and a half, staked off midway 
in the stream and pretty well in straight line. Here for fifty 
years the Henley regattas have been rowed during three days, 
when thousands of the better sort of people come to assist in 
forming an aquatic pageant. There was a rowing match nearly 
every half hour from 12 noon to 7 p.m. The scene on the river 
during all these hours was of the brightest and most animating 
description. We have nothing at home at all similar. Prob- 



A Beautiful Stg/it. 107 

ably there were on the course during the intervals of the races 
not less than a thousand craft of all sorts, ranging from steam 
and electric launches down to the canoe, moving slowly up and 
down, laden chiefly with ladies in charming summer toilets, the 
fair-complex,ioned, plump girls reclining in easy abandon on 
cushions of rich-colored cloths, forming the most charming 
pictures. All was a continually moving pageant full of life 
and color, an aquatic pomp noiseless and brilliant in a setting 
of green and shady shores, with softly rounded hills behind, 
all rich with the luxury of an English midsummer. The good- 
nature, self-possession, and courtesy shown by the occupants 
of the crowded, constantly colliding boats was pleasant to 
see. All was joy and sunshine, and I was surprised to see 
how fully the steady English folk can give themselves up 
to prolonged holiday. Nothing could exceed the pains taken 
by our entertainers to make all agreeable for their guests. 
Excellent refreshments were served at frequent intervals, good 
wines flowed freely, and, notably, the strawberries grown on 
the grounds of one of the family and gathered each morning 
for the occasion were not easily to be surpassed in size and 
flavor. 

We dined, breakfasted and slept in the great Elizabethan 
house, reaching it at a laie hour, and driving down to Henley 
each morning. On the night of the third day, Friday, all the 
house-boats were illuminated with thousands of colored lights, 
and hundreds of boats were moving up and down, carrying 
Chinese lanterns, and far as the eye could see the right bank 
of the river shone like the city of a dream, a vision of fairy- 
land. We glided up and down in the midst of this dreamlike 
pageant in an electric launch, moving without noise or jar, as 
if by magic, in the midst of excellent fireworks from the 
" lone" and most of the other house-boats. The " lone" alone 
was hung with six hundred colored lights. 

We reached the hospitable mansion of our friends at mid- 
night, on this last day, after three days of great enjoyment. 
We bade adieu to our most kind hostess, and returned to Lon- 
don and the Metropole by the ii a.m. train on Saturday. 

July 7, 8, 9. — Have done little in these days but nibble a bit 
at the rind of this huge cheese of a cit)?^, postponing any seri- 
ous doing until we return to it for a longer time. Have passed 
another half day in the National Galler)-, chiefly among the 



108 The Tower of London. 

fresh, pure and clear paintings of the British school. Such 
beautiful, natural landscapes of Constable, a scene by Mor- 
land, any number of Gainsboroughs, many by Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, such dogs by Landseer, and a whole roomful of 
Turner's romantic canvases, magical as dreams — many, too, by 
Hogarth. Hired a courier for the Continent, Girado Frattini, 
sometime of Milan. 

July lo. — Called on Mr. Lincoln, our Minister to the Court 
of St. James, to whom I had letters. He is a plain, unpretend- 
ing gentleman, in his manner quite American, but not, as I 
could see, with any look, expression or feature of his great 
father. He seems a man of sense, and the two or three speeches 
he has been obliged to make here on public occasions have 
shown much of the tact and happy knack of saying the right 
thing on the spot so marked in his two immediate predeces- 
sors. 

July II. — Passed the day making calls and shopping with 
family. Drove down to 24 Cheyne Row to get a photograph 
of Carlyle with his faithful niece who cared for his last days 
with such affection standing beside him, partly promised me 
when we called before, but Mrs. Cottrell had not been able to 
procure me one. The little house again struck me as not un- 
comfortable or unpleasant and the neighborhood not at all 
mean. 

We were at the Tower yesterday. The several towers or 
masses of buildings, enclosed by a massive wall and, with the 
ample open spaces, occupying some thirteen acres, have be- 
come so modernized as not to make a very serious impression 
as a fortress and prison where, during the dark and bloody 
centuries of early English history, so much transpired of a sort 
to touch and sadden the mind. The moat is dry, broad paved 
driveways lead into the courts thronged with groups of sight- 
seers and bustling with various activity and signs of modern 
life, so that one experiences little emotion on being informed 
in broad daylight that at the foot of a certain staircase the 
bodies of the murdered princes were supposed to have been 
buried, there being no token whatever of such an event ; nor 
can one — at least I could not — grow sad in spirit over certain 
flat stones forming a pavement in a sunny court with in- 
scriptions in most cases illegible from wear and dust, the sun 
shining down hotly on them and a busy throng of holiday 



Leave London for Brussels. 109 

people moving about, where certain illustrious dust of victims 
of old-time tyranny is supposed to lie. But the show of ancient 
armor is very fine and in marvellous quantity and perfection. 
The regalia, too, is interesting. In Queen Victoria's crown is 
a huge ruby which burned in the casque of Henry V. on the 
field of Agincourt. On the whole, I was disappointed in the 
Tower. 

July 12. — Left London at ii a.m. for Brussels via Dover and 
Calais by the Southeastern Railway. Our way to Dover, 
seventy-three miles, lay through the fair county of Kent, fertile, 
well cultivated, rich in promising fields of hops and many 
orchards. Reached Dover at i p.m., and thought of Shake- 
spere's " Lear" as the train swept along the base of the white, 
chalky cliffs beside the Channel. Our good luck in weather 
still attended us, for the sea was smooth as a pond, and we 
reached Calais in just one hour, in all comfort, on a new, 
large, well-arranged boat, the " Calais-Douvre. " Lunched 
in the Calais vStation restaurant, and took train at 2 p.m. 
Frattini showed tact in procuring us a coupe or forward end 
of a carriage with a glass front, all to ourselves, and this with 
no extra cost except a small fee to the guard. The roads are 
not so smooth as the English nor the carriages as good. These 
are mounted on higher wheels, much as ours are. After leav- 
ing Calais we crossed for a long way a low, level country. At 
twenty-six miles we reach St. Omer, with 20,000 inhabitants ; 
at sixty-six miles, Lille, 188,000 inhabitants, the chief town 
of the French Department of the North, Tall chimneys 
everywhere indicate its importance as a manufacturing 
town. 'Tis here Lisle thread is largely made. The Picture 
Gallery is said to be one of the largest in France, embracing 
eight hundred and fifty pictures, many of them by the best 
artists. Eleven miles farther on we reach the Belgian frontier 
at Blandain and have our luggage inspected at the custom- 
house there — inspection a mere form. At sixteen miles is 
Tournai, with 36,000 population, very ancient and the most im- 
portant in the province of Hainault, very pleasantly situated 
on the Schelde. Like the most of these border towns it has a 
checkered history, belonging first to one and then to another 
of the greater neighboring powers, but in 1728, by the Treaty 
of Aix-la-Chapelle, it was set back to the Netherlands. We 
pass on through Ath, thirty-five miles from Lille, through 



110 Fertility and Thrift. 

Enghien, fifty miles, Hal, fift}'^-three miles — a famous resort of 
pilgrims to the wonder-working image of the Virgin in the 
Church of Notre Dame — and reach Brussels, sixty-eight miles 
from Lille and one hundred and thirty-four from Calais, at 
8 P.M., and are very comfortably established in the charming 
Hotel Bellevue in the upper part of the town near the Park. 

At Enghien we passed from the province of Hainault into 
that of Brabant ; and our whole ride this p.m. has been through 
a country naturally fertile, but rendered many times more so 
by such minute, patient and thorough cultivation as I have 
never seen or hardly thought possible. Imagine a vast plain 
stretching away indefinitely, with no greater irregularities of 
surface than an occasional knoll never attaining the dignity of 
a hill, or rising beyond a series of long, low undulations, all this 
surface compelled to yield the utmost possible of an exceeding 
variety of crops in little space — wheat, oats, barley, beans, beets, 
potatoes, etc., all in the same small field, so that the whole face 
of the country presents the appearance of a vast garden. Es- 
pecially as we draw near Brussels every inch of land is made to 
produce something. 

It is now the season of the wheat harvest, and in a bit of 
triangular land among green crops I saw in one case two and 
in another one little shock of wheat carefully set up. All 
crops are looking excellently well, as they must under such 
cultivation. Such abounding fertility, such fecundity of 
nature would of itself form a delightful picture ; but when 
amid fields where green bits of pasture and meadow thick 
with red and white clover and varied crops also richly green, 
and yellow wheat fields as yet untouched or set thick with long, 
slender shocks and round stocks of sheaves, are many trim 
farm-houses, yellow-roofed, with low walls of brown, yellow, 
white and even blue, and dainty villages among trim trees, 
out of which rises the church-belfry, all these not at dis- 
tant intervals, but in constant succession, the wide scene 
becomes of amazing beauty. On spots of vantage gray wind- 
mills, often high-stilted, fling out huge vans, sixty feet long, 
looming against the blue sky, at rest or lazily revolving in 
the light breeze of to-day, and over all is tranquillity and 
peace. The elms rise tall and slim from constant trimming, 
in graceful rows along the canals and the boundaries of the 
little farms, with willows dwarfed by cutting off the tops, and 



', Brussels. — TJie Palais de Justice. Ill 

Lombardy poplars — not growing in the scraggy, funereal way 
we see them at home, but fully and gracefully, branched low 
down, green and thrifty. 

The Belgian provinces we traversed to-day sustain the pro- 
digious numbers of more than eight hundred to the square 
mile. I fancied I saw a more complete cultivation and thrift 
from the time we crossed the frontier from France, though 
much struck with both before. This little kingdom of Belgium 
is only one hundred and seventy-nine miles long by one hun- 
dred and ten miles wide, but its population in 1886 was 5,900,000, 
of whom about two and one half millions are Flemings of Teu- 
tonic origin and two millions Walloons, partly of Celtic origin, 
more enterprising as well as more excitable than the phleg- 
matic Flemings. Belgium is a thoroughly Roman Catholic 
country, there being only some 1500 Protestants with 3000 
Jews in its population. It became independent of Holland by 
a revolution in 1830, and a national congress summoned by the 
provisional government called to the throne in 1831 Leopold 
of Saxe-Coburg, whose son, Leopold II., is the present king. 
Charlotte, the widow of Maximilian, the ill-starred Emperor 
of Mexico, is his sister. 

July 13. — Here we are in Brussels, a well-built, handsome 
city of 175,000 inhabitants, and if its ten suburbs are reck- 
oned, more than double that number. The streets of the 
upper town rebuilt after a great fire in 1731, are wide and 
paved with square granite blocks ; the private dwellings — 
mostly of brick covered with stucco and painted white — are 
handsome and fine, and the public buildings, both for the use 
of the State and city governments, really magnificent and far 
beyond anything we pretend to in any city at home. The 
new Palais de Justice is said to be the largest architectural 
work of this century, and is a wonderful structure. It is 
almost square at the base, is 590 feet long by 560 wide, and 
occupies a greater area than the Church of St. Peter's at Rome. 
The dome is 320 feet high in the interior, which contains 
twenty-seven large court-rooms, two hundred and forty-five 
other apartments and eight open courts. The gilded cross on 
the top is 400 feet above the pavement. Imagine this mighty 
mass of stone, richly wrought in its principal parts and 
adorned with many statues, and the cost of ten million dollars 
of our money seems almost preposterous when one thinks 



112 The Palais des Beaux Arts. 

that that amount of money expended by the city authorities of 
New York would not build one wing of it. 

In the beautiful Hotel de Ville, completed in the middle of 
the fifteenth century, containing the rooms used by the Com- 
mon Council, are costly paintings and tapestry, the ceiling- 
painting by Victor Janssens representing the gods on Olym- 
pus, the figure of Cupid turning toward the spectator its face 
and bended bow in whatever position he may stand. This 
is an orderly city, so these gorgeous rooms are in per- 
fect condition ; the city fathers have not stolen the pic- 
tures and tapestry nor disfigured them nor the beautiful 
carved oak with boot-heels or tobacco. Charming old rooms, 
these. 

The king has a huge palace here, occupying the full space 
of a New York block, and a summer residence at Laeken, 
a near suburb, with a great tract of good land, where we 
drove about on the royal farm, parts of which with a park 
are open to the public, who are made content by thus shar- 
ing in a mild way the advantages they bestow on their 
rulers. No subject is so poor that he has not an interest 
in his sovereign and can feel proud and important in pro- 
portion to the grandeur of his state, no matter how much 
he himself is stripped in helping to maintain it. So these 
Belgians, numbering not quite 6,000,000 souls, make fine 
provision for a good-sized royal family and furnish them 
palaces and parks and all the etceteras of the most power- 
ful monarchs. But they seem able to do it with their won- 
derfully patient energy and thrift, and who will begrudge 
them their pleasure in it ? 

Passed the morning in the beautiful halls of the Palais des 
Beaux Arts among the paintings there, many poorish and 
many of a high order. As we are near Antwerp, the home 
and special field of Rubens' prolific pencil, his work abounds 
here, this gallery containing at least a dozen by him, the 
magnificent "Adoration of the Magi" among them. He 
has a large piece illustrated with all his wealth of color, so 
horribly repulsive that one sickens at the sight of it. It was 
painted for the Church of the Jesuits at Ghent, and is called 
the " Martyrdom of St. Livinus." The executioner has torn 
out the tongue of his victim with pincers and is offering 
it to a dog standing by. The taste of Rubens in choosing 



What we Satv in Brussels. 113 

his subjects often seems to me of a debased sort. I cannot 
dwell in my poor hurried notes on the satisfaction we found 
in the works of masters who were only names to me three 
months ago — Claude Lorraine, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, 
Guido Reni, Van Oost, the Teniers — many examples — the 
Ruysdaels, Maes, Jan Steen, the Brueghels, Frans Hals, 
Hobbema, Van Dyck, Adrian van Ostade, Van der Weyde, 
Memling, Quentin Matsys and a long list of lesser but bright 
names. 

July 14, Sunday. — This is the Feast of St. Michael, the 
patron saint of Brussels, and there are special exercises at the 
Cathedral of St. Gudule and a pretty procession of school-chil- 
dren in white dresses and veils. The finest of all the numer- 
ous squares in the city is the Grande Place, in the centre of 
the lower town, where the noble Hotel de Ville stands, and 
all about it the old guild-houses. Great events in the history 
of Belgium have transpired here ; among them the execution, 
in the spring of 1568, of twenty-five of the nobles of the Nether- 
lands by order of the Duke of Alva, including Counts Egmont 
and Horn, to whom fine statues have been erected. The 
Porte de Hal, at the south extremity of the lower town, is all 
that remains of the old fortifications, built in r38i, and during 
the Belgian Reign of Terror the Bastile of Alva. It is a huge 
square structure with three vaulted chambers, one above the 
other. Notable, too, is the palace of the Due d'Arenberg, 
once the residence of Count Egmont, with its beautiful, gar- 
dens. So, too, the market squares for flowers, fruits and vege- 
tables, all brought in from the country round in little carts 
drawn by stout, intelligent, well-looking dogs in harness with 
collars, sometimes in pairs, oftener single. So, too, the new 
Exchange, the Bank and many another magnificent building 
in such number, with fine private residences, as make this the 
handsomest city we have yet seen. Everywhere is order and 
cleanliness and the shops are filled with fine goods in every 
kind. 

We visited a shop where lace is made and saw old and 
young workers bending unremittingly over their delicate and 
exacting work. The worn, sad face of a woman of seventy 
years impressed me, low bent, her spectacled eyes within six 
inches of the cushion on which an exquisite flower in- lace was 
growing under her worn fingers. She had so- wrought, the 
8 



U14 The Manikin Fountain. — Battle-Field of Waterloo. 

woman in charge told me, since she was a child, and her pay 
-when fully expert was two francs per day. " Is there any 
provision for such as she when quite unable to work longer ?" 
J inquired. The only answer was an indescribable shrug ex- 
pressing more clearly than words could do that such workers 
must take their chances with all other old and infirm creatures 
in this teeming hive of industry, where little girls go about 
the streets and older ones stand in doorways knitting stock- 
ings, all human creatures careful and busy at some task. 

Our rooms in the Hotel Bellevue look out on the Place 
Hoyale, on the left of which stands the Church of St. Jacques 
;sur Caudenberg with a handsome portico of the Corinthian 
-order, with noble statues and a warm fresco on the tympanum 
,by Portaels representing the Virgin comforting the afflicted. 
In front is the equestrian statue of Godfrey de Bouillon, the 
;hero of the First Crusade, said to be the finest modern Belgian 
work of the kind, erected in 1848 on the spot where the hero 
iin 1079 is said to have exhorted the Flemings to the Crusade. 
He sits with majestic face, grasping with right hand the ban- 
ner of the Cross. Near by is a charming park, originally the 
garden of the Dukes of Brabant, laid out and tended with 
great skill and care and set thickly with pleasing sculptures. 

Back of the Hotel de Ville stands one of the curiosities of 
Brussels, a diminutive bronze figure called the Manikin Foun- 
tain, a great favorite among the lower classes and always dressed 
in gala costume on great occasions. This being a festal 
.day he wears a court costume of velvet of the fashion of two 
.hundred years ago. He has changed his colors with the dif- 
ferent changes of government during the last one hundred and 
.fifty years and now possesses eight different suits. He has a 
valet appointed by the civic authorities to attend on him at a 
salary of two hundred francs per annum, and some years ago 
an old lady left him a legacy of one thousand florins. In 181 7 
he was carried away from the scene of his aqueous activity by 
some sacrilegious hand, and great was the popular rejoicing 
at his discovery and restoration, the loss being felt as a public 
calamity — an odd illustration of the extent a fantastic notion 
will take hold of an intelligent, industrial community. 

July 15. — Drove in a landau to the battle-field of Waterloo, 
ten miles from the city. Passed through a part of the Bois de 
Ja Cambre on the southeast side of the city, made into a fine 



The Mound of the Belgian Lion. 115 

park from a part of the Foret de Soignes, said to be much 
like the Bois de Boulogne of Paris. There is a driveway of 
square granite blocks quite to the battle-ground. The village 
of Waterloo is a long single street, chiefly of connected farm- 
houses, whence jssued droves of stout children with great flaxen 
heads, to turn summersaults and beg beside the carriage. 
Went directly to the Chateau of Hougomont, passing through 
the little village of Mont Saint-Jean. This chateau, as it is 
called, is a strong brick house with numerous out-buildings, 
all enclosed by a heavy brick wall some eight feet high, which 
also surrounds an orchard of say four acres — really a strong 
defence against anything but artillery. It was just in front of 
the lines of the allied forces and was pierced, walls and all, 
with loop-holes the day before the battle and occupied by 
the Coldstream Guards and some German riflemen, partly 
protected by the small cannon in the main line of the Allies 
behind. The French assaulted it at the beginning of the decisive 
battle of the 1 8th, but so stout and determined was the resist- 
ance of its handful of brave defenders that although during 
the day some twelve thousand men were hurled against it— - 
nearly one-fifth of the entire French force— it was not taken. 
The buildings still stand in good preservation, showing the 
marks of bullets, and within the court-yard stands the battered 
brick tower over the old well into which some two hundred 
bodies of the ghastly dead were thrust. 

Lunched at a little tavern near the field, then walked to the 
Mound of the Belgian Lion, an artificial pyramidal mound 
thrown up on the spot where the Prince of Orange was 
wounded on that day. The lion, weighing twenty-eight tons, 
was cast from captured French cannon. Climbed up the steps 
leading to the summit, whence the undulating country lay be- 
fore me like a map, and with the aid of an old Frenchman who 
has made a business of laying out the plan of battle for so 
many years that he seems fully to believe in its genuineness, 
tried to get an idea of the general disposition of the respective 
forces and to comprehend the changing fortunes of the day. 
It seemed to me on the spot that I had pretty well done so, but 
when I had shaken myself down the long flight of steps, I 
ceased to feel certain of anything about it except what I had 
well known before, that this was one of the famous battles of 
the world, and that when all conjecturing is done with as to 



116 Ghent. — The Bell Rolaiid. — St. Bavon Cathedral. 

what the result might have been had this or that gone dif- 
ferently, we who trust in a Providence who orders the affairs 
of nations believe that by the very nature of His laws a limit 
is set to human ambition and endeavor, whereby the hour had 
come for the overthrow of Napoleon Bonaparte, the gigantic 
enemy of the human race. The fair fields, once ghastly with 
corpses, now wave with harvests, with no traces of the tem- 
pest which laid them waste, unless the red poppies showing 
among the yellow wheat like stains of blood have caught their 
hue from the ensanguined stream which filled these furrows 
seventy-four years ago. A little bird has built its nest in the 
jaws of the great lion on the mound, the cheerful voice of the 
.peasant is heard, land and sky are full of peace. 

July i6. — Left this fair city and the capital Hotel Bellevue 
at II A.M. for Ghent, where we arrived by rail at the Hotel 
Royal in the Place d'Armes, and drove about the city, noting 
well the belfry rising near the Cathedral with its great 
bell Roland, bearing an inscription in Flemish the translation 
of which is, " My name is Roland : when I am rung hastily, 
then there is a fire ; when I resound in peals there is a storm 
in Flanders." Many a storm has it announced in these tur- 
bulent and much-tried lands, calling to arms the stout 
burghers in the tall houses of these narrow streets and waking 
with affright the peasants far out on the level fields. The 
gifted Theodore Tilton, whose star went out in darkness be- 
fore the midday of his life, took this bell for his theme in a 
stirring poem at the beginning of our civil war, calling the 
country to arms. How well I remember his showing me the 
manuscript just after it was written and how when printed it 
rung through all the North like a battle-cry ! The lofty square 
bell-tower supporting the chime, of which Roland is one of 
the oldest and heaviest bells, was begun in 1183 ; work was 
suspended on it in 1339 and it was only carried up two-thirds 
of the intended height. The tower is 270 feet high with a 
spire added some fifty years ago, reaching altogether to 375 
feet. 

Visited the Cathedral of St. Bavon, plain on the outside, but 
rich within. The crypt was consecrated in 941 and the whole 
completed in 1300. The last chapter of the Knights of the 
Golden Fleece was held here by Philip II. in 1559 and the 
walls of the nave bear their names and armorial bearings. 



The Paintings in the Cathedral. 117 

There is a fine pulpit by Delvaux, half oak, half marble, 
representing Time and Truth in allegory, and .handsome 
carved mahogany choir-stalls. There are four enormous 
copper candlesticks some ten feet high before the choir, which 
once stood in St. Paul's, London, and were sold by Cromwell 
during the Protectorate. There are many good pictures, too ; 
but the glory of the church is the " Adoration of the Immacu- 
late Lamb," by Jan and Hubert van Eyck,two brothers — Hubert, 
the elder, born 1366, and Jan, the younger, in 1381. Hubert 
was believed to have invented oil painting. While it is now 
said by the best authorities that he did not do this, still he 
carried the use of oil as a medium so far in his wonderful color- 
ing that what was believed has good grounds. The famous 
picture in the Cathedral here is in its chief parts the work 
of Hubert, the remaining of Jan. It is an altar-piece, consist- 
ing originally of twelve sections, but the wings, excepting the 
figures of Adam and Eve, which are at Brussels, are in the 
gallery of Berlin. I see, for my part, in this renowned picture 
great power and beauty, but am not able to see in it so much 
as great critics do — the more is the pity for me, no doubt. 
But I shall honestly adhere in all these things to saying what 
I think and not what others have said. To me the picture is 
pleasing and high, but not great except when it is considered 
that he, in a time when art was low, began that noble work of 
revival which blossomed into the splendor of a century later. 
Give the Van Eycks high praise certainly for their lofty con- 
ceptions and beautiful execution. This picture has a history 
worth noting. Philip II. tried to get hold of it, but had to 
be satisfied with a copy. In 1566 it was barely saved from 
the Puritanical Reformers and in 1641 it had a narrow escape 
from burning. In 1794 it was taken to Paris and only the 
central pictures were replaced, the wings, by ignorance or 
fraud, having been sold to a dealer from whom they were 
bought by the Museum of Berlin for four hundred and ten 
thousand francs. The two wings with Adam and Eve were 
kept concealed here as unsuitable for a church until 1861, 
when they were removed to the Museum at Brussels, where 
we saw them, and queer figures of our common parents they 
are. Lucky for her male descendants that Eve did not freely 
transmit to her daughters her corporeal characteristics as shown 
by the good brothers Van Eyck. The missing wings are re- 



118 The"- Beguinages. ' ' 

placed with copies by a clever artist named Coxie. The verger 
who showed us about and opened the doors covering this 
renowned picture with reverent and tender hands is a singular- 
looking man, and the like of him is not possible, I think, in our 
country. Such short legs, dwarfing his height, while all the 
rest of him is of good size, his big Flemish face, whose features, 
taken singly, are coarse and ugly, yet are harmonized and 
pleasing from an habitual composure of them into a cheerful 
and kind expression, a voice of gentle goodness and uni- 
form politeness of tone, and a manner in all he did conforming 
to these, made of him a picture to be laid away in connection 
with the memory of the treasures he shows with such affec- 
tionate care that his acceptance of the expected gratuity did 
not belittle him. 

In the same square is the Hotel de Ville, said to be the 
most beautiful piece of Gothic architecture in Belgium. It 
dates back to 15 18, In the Marche du Vendredi, surrounded 
by antiquated buildings, is a statue to Jacques van Artevelde, 
and a stout and tough demagogue he seems, with a look some- 
thing like our own Ben Butler. In a corner of this square is 
a huge cannon called " Mad Meg," dating from the fourteenth 
century, a sister in size and shape to the " Mons Meg" in the 
court-yard of Edinburgh Castle. We did not visit any picture 
galleries here, not understanding them to be of especial merit, 
and being something weary of pictures, wanted a little rest 
before seeing the more important ones of more famous galle- 
ries elsewhere. 

Drove in the afternoon to a huge convent, or rather village 
of conventual houses on the northeast side of the town, called 
the " Beguinages," from St. Begga. It is really a little town 
enclosed by walls and moats with streets, squares, gates, eigh- 
teen convents and a church, forming a curious and picturesque 
whole. The houses are small two-storied Gothic brick struc- 
tures, the wall, running all along their fronts, being pierced for 
little doors numbered and having the names of the saint to 
whom each is dedicated painted on them. These institutions 
were founded in 1234 and have been spared through all the 
destructive changes of the centuries. The objects aimed at 
are a religious life, works of charity and the honorable self- 
support of women of all ranks. At present nearly a thousand 



Bruges. — ^SV. Sauveur Cathedral. Il9 

women occupy the convents and separate dwellings. They 
make lace, which is sold at a house near the entrance. 

Ghent is the capital of East Flanders with nearly 150,000 
population, and has always been an important city, but is los- 
ing its consequence since the separation of Belgium from Hol- 
land, and presents a dull but comfortable and pleasing appear- 
ance, with considerable manufacturing of cotton goods, the 
raw material coming increasingly from British India. 

Left for Bruges at 5 p.m. by rail and arrived at the Hotel de 
Flandre in forty-five minutes. Dined and took a long carriage 
ride about the city, which for mediaeval picturesqueness and 
quaintness surpasses anything we have yet seen. Five hun- 
dred years ago it was one of the renowned cities of the world 
and the mart where the East and West brought their divers 
products for sale and exchange. Venice, Genoa, Constanti- 
nople and the English cities brought here their richest stuffs, 
and it held this supremacy almost up to the sixteenth century, 
when its decline began, and now out of its population reduced 
to 50,000, one-quarter are said to be paupers. One effect is 
that the city stands as the refluent tide of mediaeval prosperity 
left it, no changes being called for to meet the demands of mod- 
ern trade. So we passed along narrow winding streets of high 
narrow houses with deeply notched gables, projecting windows, 
steep roofs and walls whose original colors of white and gray 
and blue and red have become toned by time into hues softer 
and richer than painter may spread on canvas, through public 
squares where the grass shoots up between the stones and the 
clatter of a pair of sabots awakens prolonged echoes, over which 
dominate the lofty structures of centuries ago, such as the 
Tour des Halles, or Belfry, with its sweet chime of bells, now 
one hundred and fifty years old, Au Lion de Flandre, the 
Cranenburg, the Hotel de Ville, dating back to 1376, the 
Maison de I'Ancien Greffe, the Palais de Justice, and fifty more, 
each a joy to the lovers of the old in architecture. 

July 17. — Visited the Cathedral of St. Sauveur with pictures 
by P. Pourbus, Jacob van Oost, Seghers, De Crayer and 
Francken — all excellent these. Then to the Church of Notre 
Dame, where is a statue of the Virgin and Child by Michael 
Angelo, a marble group of life size and extreme beauty. The 
French carried it to Paris during the Revolution, and the re- 



120 Hospital of St. John. — Church of St. Bdsile. 

fined Horace Walpole is said to have offered thirty thousand 
florins for it. There are also two sumptuous tombs in a side 
chapel here of sculptured brass with life-size effigies recum- 
bent on them of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and his 
daughter Mary, wife of the Emperor Maximilian, wrought by 
the famous artists Beckere and Jongelincx in the sixteenth 
century. Beautiful they are. Near at hand is the Hospital of 
St. John, upward of five centuries old, where the sick are tend- 
ed by Sisters of Charity. It contains two hundred and forty 
beds, and in the quaint prescription-room two sisters with 
pleasing, intelligent features in great black bonnets faced with 
white, were preparing remedies from huge jugs and bottles, 
and all sorts of quaint vials and packages ranged on shelves 
all about. But what the world comes here mainly to see are 
the pictures by Memling, who lived and worked and died 
here in 1495, and for thirty years or more painted small pic- 
tures of sacred subjects of such perfect workmanship that a 
magnifying-glass in enlarging them only reveals their beauties 
the more. Sweet-faced saints look out from his canvases in a 
way to touch the heart. The Chasse of St. Ursula, a reliquary 
of Gothic design standing on a rotatory pedestal in the centre 
of the room, is said to be his finest work. There are five of 
his pictures here in all. 

Such mellow quaintness of color and form along the canals 
as we drove about, such sweet, clear tones from the many bel- 
fries ! I shall not soon forget thee, ancient and stately Flem- 
ish town ! I must not forget to mention the richly ornament- 
ed little church of St. Basile, commonly called Chapelle de 
Saint-Sang, dating from 1150. Its name comes from some 
drops of the blood of the Saviour said to have been brought 
from the Holy Land in 1149 by Theodoric of Alsace, Count 
of Flanders, who deposited them here, where they are exhib- 
ited every Friday. N.B. — Do the priests who have the care of 
this imposition and the higher church authorities, who of 
course order and sanction its exhibition, really believe in this ? 
Who can tell ? I saw in a suite of rooms the regular yearly 
records of the city ranged on shelves, running back to 1235 ! 
In the Palais de Justice is a noble chimney-piece, filling up 
almost the entire side of the room, done in 1529 by Guyot de 
Beaugrant to celebrate the battle of Pavia and Peace of Cam- 
brai — wonderfully fine. 



Antwerp. — The Cathedral of Ndtre Dame. 121 

Left Bruges for Antwerp at 4.30, arriving at 7 p.m., passing 
through Malines, where we had a very good view of the tower 
of the Cathedral of St. Rombold, dating back to 131 2, never 
completed, but now 324 feet high with a clock whose face is 
49 feet in diameter. This cathedral was mostly built with 
money raised from pilgrims who flocked here during the four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries to buy the indulgences issued 
by Pope Nicholas V. 

Frattini had secured us good rooms in the Hotel St. An- 
toine. 

July 18. — Unless I make myself a slave to this flimsy jour- 
nal, which I cannot do, I must be content with the merest jot- 
tings and only touch on a few things. I hoped, by the sight of 
a somewhat full record of what we see abroad, to help my, 
memory in the years to come, if haply I shall be spared to live 
these months over again in retrospect, but objects of interest so 
press that I cannot. The great cathedrals we visit are my de- 
spair and I have ceased to attempt any description of these rev- 
erent piles, where pious souls, inspired and glowing, wrought 
in " sad sincerity" these marvels of ages not to be renewed. 
They can be felt, not described. So one feels when gazing on 
the tower of the Cathedral of Notre Dame here, rising like the 
fabric of a dream 400 feet into the air, delicate as a spider's web 
and so beautiful in its workmanship that Napoleon well might 
compare it to a piece of Mechlin lace. We went directly there 
in the morning to see Rubens' masterpiece, ** The Descent from 
the Cross." I have never been so moved by any work of 
human art. I could not, I am not ashamed to say it, hold back 
my tears at sight of the bloodless Christ, whose relaxed limbs 
and pallid face showed how great the agony had been, with 
what inexpressible suffering the strong and noble form had at 
last yielded up the ghost. And then the afflicted mother be- 
numbed with woe, and Mary Magdalene clasping his wounded 
feet with eager love, as if she would not even yet think him 
dead — these, and all the accessories, so harmonious, so contrib- 
uting without one detracting element, to perfect the sad 
scene, show the marvellous power of the painter's art beyond 
anything I had thought possible. In all Rubens' pictures I 
have seen before this one — and I have already seen many — there 
is something to detract from the effect, coarseness of sentiment 
often and huge unnatural limbs, but in this great picture noth- 



122 The Museum of Paintings. — The Bourse. 

ing of these disturbs the mind from realizing the awful im- 
pressiveness of the scene. The picture has winged sides show- 
ing the Salutation and the Presentation in the Temple. Into 
these Rubens has introduced, as he often did, the portraits of 
his first wife and daughter. On the other side of the altar is 
his hardly less famous " Elevation of the Cross," full of life, 
with a noble figure of Christ, but the canvas is overcharged 
with figures whose limbs are abnormally distended with brawn. 
The high-altar piece is also his : an " Assumption," wonder- 
fully fine. There is also fine stained glass of 1615 and a noble 
pulpit carved in wood, of the seventeenth century, by Van der 
Voort. In the Cathedral tower is a chime of ninety-nine bells, 
the smallest only fifteen inches in circumference, the largest, 
cast in 1507, weighing eight tons. Near the principal door of 
the Cathedral is an old well with a canopy of wrought iron 
done by Quentin Matsys, buried in 1529 near the entrance to 
the tower, exceedingly graceful. 

The handsome Hotel de Ville has a fine chimney-piece from 
the old Abbey of Tongerloo, representing the marriage of 
Cana. 

The Museum of Paintings has some seven hundred pictures, 
many of them gathered from the suppressed monasteries and 
churches of the city, including nearly a score by Rubens. No- 
table among these are his " Baptism of Christ," " Christ 
Crucified between the Two Thieves" {^^ Le Coup de Lance") — 
a wonderful picture — "Adoration of the Magi" {" Chi-ist a la 
Paille"), "The Doubting Thomas," "St. Theresa Interceding 
for Souls in Purgatory," and " Holy Family" (" La Vierge au 
Perroqitef), exceedingly fine, and so on. Fine too are very 
many of the works of Schut, Jordaens, Maes, de Vos, Rem- 
brandt, Hals, Jan Steen, Van Dyck (including his " Christ on 
the Cross"), D. Teniers the younger, Quentin Matsys, Jan van 
Eyck, Roger van der Weyde and many others. Curious to 
see the many good pictures marked in the excellent catalogue, 
" onbekennen" — artist unknown. 

In 17 18 the old Jesuit Church of St. Charles Borromee was 
burned. This was planned by Rubens and he furnished for it 
thirty-nine pictures, all of which were consumed except three 
large altar-pieces, now in the Belvedere Gallery at Vienna. 

The new Bourse is a large space covered with glass and sur- 
rounded by a double arcade, held up by sixty-eight columns, 



Church of St. Jacques. — Mus^e FlantinMoretus. 123 

opening toward the centre in Moorish-Gothic arches, a very- 
curious business-place. 

The Church of St. Jacques, finished in 1656, is exceedingly- 
rich and sumptuous in its monuments and ornaments. Among 
the richest of the many private chapels of the wealthiest and 
most distinguished families of Antwerp is that of Rubens in 
the choir at the back of the high altar. This beautiful Gothic 
chapel was designed by him. The altar-piece, a " Holy Fam- 
ily," is among his most beautiful works. All the faces are said 
to be family portraits. He sleeps between his two wives under 
the chapel floor, where he was laid to rest at the age of sixty- 
four in 1640. There are many fine pictures in this rich church, 
and beautiful stained glass of 1626. 

Quite near the Royal Palace stands Rubens' house, large and 
richly decorated, built from his own designs, showing well that 
he was a prosperous man of affairs. 

The National Bank Building, of massive and rich architec- 
ture, covers an enormous space — as large as one-half a full 
block in Brooklyn. 

Passed all of one morning in an exceedingly interesting 
place, the Musee Plantin-Moretus, the house of the famous 
printer, Christopher Plantin, who set up his printing-office in 
Antwerp in 1555, and since 1579 almost to the present day- 
business has been carried on by Plantin at first, then by the 
family of his son-in-law, Moretus. Since 1800 the printing- 
office was only used at intervals until 1875, when the building 
with all its antique furniture, tapestry, paintings (ninety por- 
traits, including fourteen by Rubens and two by Van Dyck), 
and all other collections were bought by the city of Antwerp. 
The whole, as the guide-book to which I am indebted for the 
above inventory well remarks, " now presents a unique picture 
of the dwelling and contiguous business-premises of a Flemish 
patrician at the end of the sixteenth century." The almost 
monastic building surrounds a large court and consists of a 
long series of delightful old rooms, oak-panelled, with the 
quaintest little windows. There is the printing-office with the 
hand-presses, cumbersome but good, standing as if ready for 
work to-morrow, the proof-readers' room with copy lying 
about, the proprietor's office with its gilt leathern hangings, 
the type-room with old matrices, the composing-room with 
various type arranged in cabinets as is practised now. There 



134 The Steen. 

are rooms containing the finely cut wood type, including great, 
initial letters once used so much in books, and copper plates 
with impressions from them, and many original designs — some 
by Rubens — for title-pages. There are rooms with first copies 
of early books and a library of those published by the house. 
There is a type-foundry too, and beautiful living-rooms with 
the furniture, and rare old china, brasses, etc., of this wealthy 
family during many generations, all in perfect order and good- 
ly to look upon. How different the recluse and dignified air 
of this old place from the swift maelstrom of giddy activity of 
the hand-to-mouth work of the modern printer ! In a frame 
on the wall of the publisher's business-room, tacked on with big 
brass-headed nails and covered with glass as if put there yes- 
terday, is a well-printed list of books forbidden by the Holy 
Inquisition to be bought, sold or read — an " Index Expurga- 
torius" issued by the court of that infamous institution and 
approved by the Duke of Alva when the Spaniards held this 
city. 

From the reading of this it was natural enough to visit the 
Steen, once forming a part of the Castle of Antwerp, the seat 
of the Spanish Inquisition, now a museum of antiquities of no 
great interest. But with candle in hand one goes down into 
dungeons where many a sturdy Flemish Protestant went, 
never to return more. At the foot of the dark stairway, going 
down from the Judgment Room on the first floor, is a large 
circular opening which may be closed, as now it is, by a trap- 
door, and when the condemned, whose sentence had been ren- 
dered to him in ambiguous words, had been ordered down the 
dark stairs, he dropped into the deep pit below. Our candle 
showed us a vaulted room of stone, circular in shape, into 
which the condemned felt the water slowly rising about him, 
with a pump at hand, by which his most active exertions just 
sufficed to keep the water at a standstill, then felt it gain on 
him as his strength failed, until, inch by inch, it filled the 
room. In the old world then, as in the new, in the Nether- 
lands as in Mexico, the traces of the Spaniard are the same, 
bloody and cruel. 

Although Antwerp is sixty miles from the sea, the difference 
between high and low tide in the Schelde is anywhere from 
12 to 25 feet. 

In the Church of St. Andrew, dating from 1514, is a wonder- 



Churches of St. Andrew and St. Paul. — Their Works of Art. 125 

ful pulpit carved from wood by Van Geel and Van Hool, 
representing St. Peter and St. Andrew in a boat on the sea, 
called by the Saviour. All the figures are life-size. In the 
Church of St. Paul is a fine Rubens, " Scourging of Christ," 
and delightful wood-carvings of the choir-stalls and confes- 
sionals, beside the doors of which are life-size figures of the 
apostles and saints. In the court on the south side of the 
church and rising high on an artificial mound, styled Mt. 
Calvary, are winding ways up to the top, on which all along 
are statues of saints, angels, prophets, patriarchs, in great 
numbers — a curious and rather striking exhibition. At one 
side in a recess behind great iron bars is a representation of 
Purgatory, with plaster faces painted in all forms of suffering 
expression, wrapped in red flames. 

I greatly enjoy looking at the beautiful Cathedral tower. 
Last evening at sunset it pierced the blue of the sky flecked 
with small bright clouds, seeming to lift its summit above 
them, and lower down many swallows whirled about it in wide 
circles, the liquid notes of the bells chiming the hours dropping 
softly down from the lofty height. 

Passed half an hour again in the Cathedral this morning 
before Rubens' " Descent from the Cross." In the square in 
front stands his statue in bronze, fair to see. It shows a large 
frame clothed with abundant flesh, such as he loved to wrap 
his mortals in — and immortals too, for that matter — his face 
full, clear and handsome. In the joyful exuberance of his 
fancy, the depth of his invention, the richness of his colors, he 
seems to me to resemble Shakespere. He painted more than 
one thousand pictures, throwing them off with a free hand. 

Even beyond Bruges was this city of Antwerp grand and 
opulent three hundred years ago, but under the Spanish regime 
its population, numbering 125,000 in 1568, had dwindled in 
1589 to 55,000, and following the Treaty of Munster in 1648, 
by which no sea-going vessel was permitted to ascend the 
Schelde to Antwerp, it shrunk to 40,000. Still worse, in 1830 
it was bombarded by the Dutch, who, in their turn, were be- 
sieged by the French in 1832 and the city frightfully laid waste. 
But its natural advantages as a distributing point are so 
great that it quickly rallied, and when in 1863 the navigation 
of the Schelde was made free, it came forward with a bound, 
and now has a population, including its suburbs, of 240,000, 



126 On the Way to The Hague. 

with a commerce increasing in a ratio beyond any city in Eu- 
rope. It is, too, one of the strongest fortresses on this side of 
the water, made so by modern earthworks. It has not remain- 
ing so many of the traces of the old times as Bruges. We 
drove to the docks, which include an area of some two hun- 
dred and fifty acres. The quays of solid stone lead to the 
several basins where ships from all parts of the world lie, each 
in its own dock of stone. 

I saw a curious thing in the Museum yesterday. In one of 
the saloons — there are a number of copyists at work in all the 
galleries we visit — there was an easel standing before a picture 
— " Card-Players," by the younger Teniers, if I mistake not — 
with an unfinished copy on it, which I glanced at and thought 
fully as good as any others, when what was my surprise to see 
a bright-looking little man drop into a chair before it, and 
slipping his feet from his loose shoes, lift one leg to his hat 
and remove it by taking hold of the edge of the brim with his 
big and next toe and placing it on the floor in a perfectly 
easy and careless way. I then noticed that he had no arms 
and that his toes were bare. He proceeded in the handiest 
way — if such a word may be used of the feet — to open some 
vials of colors, mix them to suit, took his palette with the toes 
of his left foot, adjusted his stick, seized his brush between 
the big and next toe of his right foot and went to work with 
as much ease and skill as another. Frattini said he had a com- 
mission to make the copy on which he was working for three 
hundred dollars and that his work is well thought of ; also 
that he shaves himself, ties his cravat and does his toilet 
otherwise, all with his toes. Speaking of this phenomenon to 
Mr. Stewart, our Consul here, that gentleman informed me 
that he not only knew this case, but also another in a gallery 
in some German city. 

July 19. — After three interesting days here left for The 
Hague at 3.30 p.m., and reached comfortable rooms at the 
Hotel Bellevue there at 6.30, a railway ride of three hours. 
At Roosendaal, twenty-three miles from Antwerp, we under- 
went the Dutch Custom-House, which threatened to be for- 
midable, as many squatty officials with much gilt braid on 
them rushed out with much jargon and gesture and compelled 
all the train into the big examining-room by one entrance, 
guarded so that no return was possible until the word was 



The Hague. 137 

given, but really it proved quite mild, as not a single box or 
bag was opened, I believe. Passed through busy Rotterdam 
with its 200,000 inhabitants and thronged canals, Delfshaven, 
Schiedam, the source of " Schnapps," " Hollands" and " Gene- 
va," so called from the jenever or juniper-berry with which it 
is flavored, of which it is noted there are over two hundred 
distilleries, also that some thirty thousand pigs are annually 
fattened from their refuse ; through Delft and Ryswyk, where 
the great peace between England, France, Holland, Germany 
and Spain was concluded in 1697. 

The country we passed through in Holland is so wet, not- 
withstanding the numerous canals and ditches, that field crops 
are not cultivated at all to the extent hitherto noticed, but 
instead are miles and miles of good pasture land, on which 
thousands of fine Dutch cattle are feeding, big handsome 
creatures, mostly white with large patches and bands of black. 
Lofty picturesque windmills are seen everywhere. I counted 
twenty in sight at once from the car-windows. On the canals 
great, burly, awkward brown boats with all sorts of queer 
cargoes and clumsy, lumbering tackle are towed along slug- 
gishly by men or horses, sometimes moving creepingly by the 
use of a tall, mahogany-colored sail, with broad-backed boat- 
men, in wide hats, puffing short pipes. There are no fences 
by the road-sides or dividing the fields any more than in Bel- 
gium, only hedges and more frequently lines of trees, which 
are everywhere cultivated with great care and often set in 
double rows, forming avenues along the canals. These are in 
many places higher than the country they traverse, and the 
water is pumped up into them by the windmills out of the 
ditches intersecting every acre of the land, one would think. 

Just before reaching Dordrecht we crossed an arm of the 
sea called the Kollandsch Diep on a bridge seven-eighths 
of a mile long, formed by fourteen iron arches, each of 1 10 yards 
span and 15 feet above the level of the highest tide, with swing 
bridges for the passage of large vessels. Thirteen stone but- 
tresses support the bridge, each 50 feet long by 10 wide. The 
foundation of three of these is 50 feet below low-water mark. 
The cost was about two and one half million dollars. Fares 
are low on the railways here and in Belgium, but the practice 
of charging well for every pound of luggage brings the cost 
to about the same as our roads at home. 



138 The Mauritshuis and its Picture Gallery. 

The Hague is a pleasant, well-built town of 140,000 souls 
and has a prosperous and rather high-toned look, owing to the 
residence of the court and other high functionaries, home and 
foreign. It has a modern look and the public buildings are 
not specially imposing nor interesting. Most so are the old 
Hall of the Knights, the Town Hall, the Groote Kerk and the 
Mauritshuis built by Prince John Maurice of Nassau in 1679, 
wherein is now a celebrated picture gallery of three hundred 
paintings. Jan Steen, Terburg, David Teniers the Younger, 
Gerard Dou, Adrian van Ostade and Adrian van de Velde are 
seen at their best here, with fine landscapes by the Ruysdaels. 
Rubens and Van Dyck also each have several excellent pic- 
tures here and Wouverman half a dozen, said to be among his 
best, and fine they are. There is a beautiful " Madonna" by 
Murillo. There is a " Susanna" by Rembrandt, greatly praised, 
but not pleasing to me although I recognize the greatness 
of the style, because of the ugliness of the form portrayed. It 
is said that his wife Saskia stood for the model. If so he 
could easily have chosen better elsewhere. His " Presentation 
in the Temple" is here, but I did not become greatly interested 
in it ; but did greatly in his " School of Anatomy," a large 
painting showing a group about a corpse, listening to the 
celebrated Dr. Nicolaus Tulp as he explains the anatomy of 
the arm. Wonderful is this picture with its strong faces and 
striking accessories. An ornament of the collection is Paul 
Potter's " Bull," famous the world over and justly so. The 
whole canvas — peasant, cow, sheep and bull — is alive — the bull 
is almost flesh and blood. Potter painted this picture at the 
age of twenty-two. There are two others here, also by him, 
one fine, very fine, a landscape with cows and pigs. Alto- 
gether a fine collection of pictures. 

We had admission to a small collection in the private 
residence of Baron Steengracht, say a hundred in all, hung 
in his drawing-rooms, all of a high order, comprising choice 
examples by Gerome, Willems, Horace Vernet, Winterhalter, 
Meissonier, Bouguereau, Blees, Koekkoek, Rubens (" Drunken 
Bacchus"), Cuyp, Jordaens, Paul Potter ("Three Cows"), 
J. Ruysdael, A. van Ostade, Teniers the Younger, Jan Steen, 
Hobbema, Gerard Dou, and Rembrandt's "Bathsheba after 
her Bath," called one of his finest, but not liked by me for 
the same reason as I give in the case of his " Susanna." 



A Drive to Delft. — Schevenitigen. 129 

There are many pleasant squares in the town, and in front 
of the Royal Palace on one of these is a fine statue of William 
I. of Orange. 

We drove out to Delft, five miles, and saw the beautiful 
marble monument to William of Orange, the Silent, in Nieuwe 
Kerk, and the Prinsenhof Palace, where he lived and was 
assassinated in 1584. In the Oude Kerk lie Admiral Tromp, 
who defeated the English fleet under Admiral Blake and 
hoisted a broom to his masthead afterward to signify that he 
had swept the sea, and Admiral Piet Hein, who in 1628 
captured the Spanish " silver fleet " with a freight valued at 
twelve million florins, nearly five million dollars. Both 
have monuments where they lie, well carved in marble, 
short in the legs, but stout of heart. The road to Delft ran 
along a great canal, the Avater in it and in all the many others 
— we crossed scores and scores of them — full of algae and 
looking dirty, as it really is, and smelling vilely. I should 
say a good country for quinine. And such huge windmills, 
two and three stories high all along ! 

Our pleasant rooms at the good Hotel Bellevue look across 
a canal into a well-kept lawn where is a great herd of 
deer, the fringe of a noble park with finer trees than I have 
seen anywhere except in a few places in England, great 
beeches and elms and horse-chestnuts. I walked here on 
Sunday afternoon. Thousands of decent, orderly people 
were moving about slowly in the grand avenues, quietly 
conversing or listening to the music of an excellent band. 
Here and there were clean little carts with the brightest of 
brass cans, from which milk was sold, the only fluid visible. 
Hardy little infantry soldiers were frequent, being off duty, 
with their sweethearts holding by the sleeve of their ill-fitting 
jackets ; ditto in the cavalry service, with hot fur shakos a 
mile too big for their round heads, and terrible, long spurs to 
their heels. 

We made a visit to Scheveningen, a watering-place on the 
sea, three miles from The Hague. There is a good beach 
enough, a big hotel, a good many shops and boarding-houses, 
plenty of sand, bathing-machines, innumerable wicker-cov- 
ered chairs crowding the shore and looking in the distance 
like cones of yellow sand, some bathers, many people moving 
up and down, happy children with toy shovels, and all the 
9 



130 The '■'■ House in the Wood." 

marks of a seaside place, but nothing peculiar, and inferior 
to our Coney Island, in the location, the accommodations and 
the various life. 

In a corner of the park I have spoken of, a little out from 
the city, is the Huis ten Bosch, meaning, in the easier Ameri- 
can tongue, the " House in the Wood," a royal villa erected 
by the widow of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange, who died 
in 1647. The late Queen, first wife of the present King 
William III., was a friend to Motley, and he resided here some 
time while writing his '' Rise of the Dutch Republic." His 
portrait hangs in one of the rooms. Let no one come here 
without visiting this house, in whose stately and beautiful 
rooms are such treasures of hangings, furniture, mural paint- 
ings, frescoes, cabinets, vases and many more precious things, 
such as one is not likely to meet many times, wherever he 
may wander. 

July 23. — At 4.30 P.M. left The Hague for Amsterdam, arriv- 
ing at 6 P.M. and finding most excellent quarters at the hand- 
some Brack's Doelen Hotel. Indeed, the size and sumptuosity 
of our parlor rather disturbed me for fear of the cost, but 
Frattini, whose previous letter had secured all this splendor, 
explained that the cost would be only the ordinary charge for 
simply good rooms ; so we bestow ourselves without scruple, 
taking the risk of being thought to belong to some one of the 
many ranks of nobility in which these small kingdoms do so 
much abound. The country we came over from The Hague 
is nowhere more than two feet above the surface of the water 
in the small canals and ditches which interlace the whole face 
of it like the veins and arteries of the human hand. In a 
great many places there are miles and miles not six inches 
above the water. The great canals into which the water is 
lifted from this intricate system are an5^where from ten to fifteen 
feet above the level of the land. The country is in great part 
in pasture, supporting immense herds of Dutch cattle, with 
frequent fields of wheat, oats, beans, every foot being care- 
fully cultivated. At one point I counted twenty-nine wind- 
mills from the car-windows. It has been a good deal rainy- 
since we came into the Netherlands, and the farmers seem to 
b^ troubled by it in securing their wheat and hay. 

Amsterdam is an old city, numbering now nearly 400,000 
inhabitants, and is the commercial capital of Holland, lying 
at the influx of the Amstel, one of the mouths of the Rhine, 



Amsterdavi. 131 

into an arm of the Zuyder Zee. Although the number of 
ships that enter its excellent harbor is only about one-third 
that of Antwerp, it is the chief mart for the colonial produce 
of the Dutch colonies and one of the first commercial cities of 
Europe. The city lies in the form of a semicircle and is 
divided into ninety islands by the " Grachten" or canals, 
crossed by some three hundred bridges. The water in these 
canals is about three feet deep, with almost the same depth 
of mud below. This is dredged out and the water frequently 
renewed by an arm of the North Sea Canal, so that the canals 
in and about the city look cleaner and smell less offensively 
than those of The Hague or Antwerp. The nature of the soil 
is such that no structure can be erected without driving piles 
to sustain it down through the upper strata of loam and fine 
sand into the firm sand below. All the houses are so founded. 
The Exchange rests on 3469 and the Royal Palace on 13,000 
such piles. The vast system of the city canals is connected 
with the large and commodious harbor, and this with the 
North Sea Canal leading to the sea-coast, fifteen miles away. 

The streets are narrow for the most part, except where they 
border on the canals, and the houses high and narrow, rising 
often in five or six stories, of exceedingly various and quaint 
styles of architecture, the greater number with lofty gables 
curved in and then rounding out again, presenting the appear- 
ance of an open loop. Near the top projects the end of a 
beam covered by a little roof with a hook on the under side 
for attaching a pulley. Bricks, thin, dark and fine, are the 
principal material used in the houses, and a firm gray sand- 
stone in many of the more important public buildings. The 
streets are well kept and quiet, as there are very few carriages, 
and the business traffic is chiefly by water. Indeed, pedes- 
trians freely walk in the driveways of the streets and slowly 
make way for a passing carriage, the driver of which must 
regulate his pace according to the free or crowded condition 
of the thoroughfares. The numerous shops look bright and 
well filled with good wares of every sort, and the people seem 
contented and well-looking, though not comparable in their 
personal appearance with those of Brussels or Antwerp, the 
men, and especially the women, seen abroad in the former city 
being better formed and handsomer in face than any I have 
seen on the Continent. 

The Hebrew element is large here, comprising some 30,000 



132 The Royal Palace. — Ryks Museum. 

German and 3500 Portuguese Jews, who come to the front 
apparently with the ingenious activity characteristic of the 
race in whatever land it gets a foothold. The large trade in 
diamonds and the cutting of them is quite in their hands ; in- 
deed, we hardly visit a shop for articles we take an interest in 
without finding the proprietor a suave and polished Hebrew, 
and if not honest, a Yankee on a brief visit is not likely to 
discover it. 

The number of specially fine public buildings is not great, 
but the whole city is well built, and in the endless variety of 
detail giving the houses an individuality, so that scarcely any 
two are just alike, it presents a series of pictures constantly 
fresh and new and charming. I greatly admire these strange, 
quaint houses. A considerable number of them lean out of 
the perpendicular by reason of the sinking of some part of 
their artificial foundations, but this, even when it has gone to a 
considerable extent, does not seem to affect their stability. 
Except in the case of quite well-to-do families, the citizens 
seem to live over their shops and places of business of what- 
ever kind, where they have large and commodious premises. 

The Royal Palace is a large and massive structure, once a 
town hall, but presented to King Louis Napoleon as a residence 
in 1808. In contains fine halls and its tower is crowned with 
a gilded ship. The great Central Railway Station is an in- 
stance of what a great architect can do to make an impos- 
ing and handsome structure devoted to common and prosaic 
uses. But the crowning glory of the city is its government 
museum, called Ryks Museum, covering nearly three acres 
of ground and including, besides one of the finest picture 
galleries we have seen, containing over fifteen hundred pict- 
ures of old and modern masters, collections in all fields of the 
history, arts and sciences of the Netherlands. These are 
housed in three hundred and thirty rooms, spacious, highly 
ornamented and finely lighted. The word magnificent is not 
too strong to apply to this noble building built by the govern- 
ment, wherein it is proposed to place all the great paintings 
of the kingdom, and only the natural reluctance of towns like 
The Hague, Haarlem, and indeed all others (for gems of art 
are scattered through them all) prevents. But here are the 
best works of the Dutch artists whose names I have already 
had occasion to mention so often heretofore, and as this is 



The Little Island of Marken. 133 

Rembrandt's home, so here we find several of his best pictures, 
and notably his " Night Watch," his largest and most celebrated, 
work, II by 14 feet. It represents Captain Frans Banning 
Cocq's company of arquebusiers emerging from their guild- 
house, whose lofty vaulted hall is lighted only by windows 
above, so that many figures are in partial twilight, while the 
faces and forms in the foreground are shown in an atmosphere 
of light, mellow, wonderful, and all the canvas stirs with the 
most energetic and picturesque life. The room where this 
picture is shown is called the Rembrandt Room, and while his 
spirit does not pervade this city as that of Rubens does Ant- 
werp, the tokens of him are frequent, and his statue stands in 
a little square called by his name, where are stately trees and 
many flowers and benches where the citizens sit and smoke 
and meditate. ' Tis a handsome statue in bronze, showing a 
handsome man in Flemish dress, with a face earnest, thought- 
ful and a certain deep, half sad look like that Dante wears. 
Indeed, in the homely and repulsive subjects he often chooses 
for his pencil and the mystical mingled with the realistic tones 
and colors he used, he seems to me not unlike the great Italian 
poet. 

I hired a little steam-launch one morning, which we took 
just beside our hotel, and we threaded our way among the 
canals into the river Y, passing under a great many bridges, 
so that the little smoke-stack had to be constantly lowered 
and raised — a process the stolid mariner attending on it took 
as quite a matter of course — and where this estuary issues 
from the Zuyder Zee were raised to the level of its surface, a 
height of three feet, by a lock which protects the system of city 
canals from overflow. Two hours' quite smart steaming on 
the broad inland sea brought us to the objective point of the 
trip, the little island of Marken, which rises just above the level 
of the sea and has been from time immemorial the abode of a 
race of fishermen who with their families are the sole occu- 
pants, who intermarry and have for centuries held strictly to 
their old habits, manners and costumes. The dreary little 
island consists of say a hundred acres, intersected everywhere 
by narrow canals, and contains something over a thousand in- 
habitants, who subsist entirely by fishing. I counted one hun- 
dred and twenty of their stout, brown, lumbering boats, each 
with a tall, strong mast, a little pennon flying atop, drawn up 



134 Quaint Custo?ns and Costumes. 

on the beach in double rows in the most perfect order. They 
hold themselves aloof from the outside world, are proud, and 
jealous of strangers, who, as a. rule, are not made welcome, 
and I engaged a man to go with us who, by many visits, has 
ingratiated himself with them, learned their ways, and now 
makes a business of getting visitors the privilege of landing, 
and to some extent visiting them in their homes. The men 
wear little caps, loose blue blouses, huge baggy trowsers. end- 
ing at the knee, long, coarse woollen stockings and wooden 
sabots, and are strong, bold, independent-looking men. The 
women wear caps of white lace, jackets embroidered in gay 
colors, blue petticoats puffing out enormously at the hips, and 
sabots like the men. The children until seven years of age 
are dressed alike in long gowns, with embroidered caps, and 
with their hair banged in front are of undistinguishable sex 
except by a circular bit of different colored cloth in the crown 
of the caps of the boys. At the age of seven the boys assume 
the toga virilis and go at once into the full costume of the men. 
We saw a sturdy, flaxen-pated little fellow who had put on 
his only a few days before, in which he strutted about quite 
at home in his enormous breeks, and our conductor pointed 
to the heavy silver clasp which fastened his blouse at the neck 
and explained that all the men wore these of such value that 
should any poor fellow become drowned and his body be 
found by strangers, the value of this jewel would pay for his 
burial in some spot of earth — a sad and touching indication, I 
thought, of the perilous life they lead. 

A smart shower was falling as we threaded our way along 
the dismal and slippery path leading from the landing to the 
nearest of the little villages, when a small cracked bell in the 
little tower of the only poor little church on the island began 
to toll in the dismalest way, and we saw a long, straggling 
procession of these picturesque people coming from another 
village, and were aware of its funereal character by the slow, 
measured pace and the clanging bell, and as it came nearer, 
by a boat towed along on one of the ditch-like canals, a coffin 
resting in it on low trestles and several women about it bow- 
ing their heads on their knees. I have never seen so mourn- 
ful a funeral as this, which passed directly by us as we managed 
to stand aside on the insecure soil to give it room, in atti- 
tudes of respectful sympathy, and noticing with interest the 



Thrift and Cleanliness. 135 

brown, manly faces and strange costumes. They have one 
huge common tomb in a low mound, where the coffins of the 
dead are placed together since a great inundation a century 
ago swept the island and washed the dead from their graves 
and out to sea. All parts of the island are subject to over- 
flow, except the few somewhat higher spots where the three 
or four villages are placed. They raise no crops but grass 
and maintain no domestic animals save some half-dozen 
cows to supply a little milk, all other food coming from the 
main-land — fish of course excepted, which with potatoes and 
bread form the chief part of their food. And yet in the little 
houses — they are more than huts — of these fisher folks are 
certain treasures of old Delftware, brass and pewter, carved 
oaken furniture, old clocks and old silver work, which would 
make a collector green with envy, nor can they be had of 
these poor people for love or money. They treasure them 
from age to age, from generation to generation, handing them 
down as precious home-treasures to be sacredly kept along 
with the embroidered wedding and gala dresses, which lie care- 
fully bestowed in old cabinets for hundreds of years. Only 
in the last extremity, when the pressure of distress can no 
longer be endured and other relief is despaired of, does any 
owner of these precious heirlooms part with enough to pro- 
long life. And so they remain here as in the two houses we 
visited, the two little rooms of each actually made noble by 
rows of these precious articles kept in these mean surroundings 
with the utmost care and pride. There would seem to be no 
reason for apprehending an extinction of this peculiar people, 
as the island swarms with children, who kept us eager com- 
pany in our tour and struggled for the small coins and cakes 
dealt out by our conductor, with a clamorous vigor promising 
well for their length of days. 

We steamed across to Monnikendam, a quaint, dull town 
on the main-land, then down a sluggish canal to Broek, so 
picturesque and clean that a dirty sidewalk would have been 
refreshing, and visited a farm-house where Edam cheese is 
made, with such wonderful neatness in all the arrangements 
that one would hardly suspect the tiled stalls for the cows 
to be used by four-footed tenants. Thence back to Amsterdam 
by the old North Holland Canal, some ten feet higher in many 
places than the country on either side, a country level, green 



136 Leave Amsterdam for Berlin. 

with rich pastures bordered with trees, and thousands of 
sleek, tranquil cattle feeding, windmills all along the horizon, 
little villages and great farm-houses with huge pyramidal red 
roofs, making such a picture in the soft light of sinking day 
as will not easily be effaced from my memory. 

There is scarcely anything left of national costumes or 
peculiarities of dress anywhere in the Netherlands. In Belgium 
we saw nothing distinctive in that way, and in Holland only 
now and then a rich head-dress of lace, with plates of gold in 
front of the ears and great gold pins standing high up like 
horns on some matron of the old-fashioned sort, and becoming 
it seemed too, giving a kind of dignity to the wearer. But 
ready-made clothing is reducing all nationalities to a dreary 
uniformity of ugliness, and the people in the streets of Brus- 
sels, Antwerp and Amsterdam might, so far as appearance 
goes, have bought their clothing in Rochester. Only the sabot 
holds its own astonishingly well when one considers what 
an inflexible wooden trough it is, and its use is quite common 
among the poorer people. It is interesting to see how well 
they manage them, and the children run and leap in them 
with a freedom and ease one would not think possible. 

On Sunday I strolled along the streets well filled with neat- 
ly dressed people sauntering soberly about in a contented sort 
of way, and as well fed, housed and clad as the people of our 
own cities ; and this is true of all the cities, big and little, we 
have visited here. There may be depths of misery somewhere, 
but nothing apparent indicates it either in town or country. 
I noticed nearly one half the shops were open, but very few 
customers inside. 

Holland has a population of about four and one half millions, 
three-fifths of which is Protestant. Long may these pros- 
perous and, to the eye of the traveller, happy people of the 
snug little kingdoms of the Netherlands continue so, kept from 
foreign harm by the jealousy of the surrounding nations, and 
so left to pursue, as they are successfully doing, all the arts 
of peace. 

July 29, Monday. — Left the goodly city of Amsterdam, 
where I would gladly have lingered a month at least, at 
9 A.M. for Berlin, where we arrived at 10.30 p.m. the same day 
and found good rooms at the Hotel Kaiserhof, secured in 
advance by the attentive Frattini, We had a comfortable 



Berlin. 137 

compartment to ourselves all our journey, and a warm dinner 
handed in at one station, the trays, with ingeniously arranged 
dishes, being taken off at the next. As far as Utrecht the 
country continues at the same low level of pasture land, sus- 
taining thousands of fine cattle on grass, which is not renewed 
for ages, and only invigorated by the manure of stock spread 
broadcast on the land, forty acres of which keep in excellent 
condition sixty head of the large Dutch cattle. All that part 
of Holland we have visited is in the Rhine delta, and the land 
was deposited by that river in the long past and is a rich 
alluvium at top. I have not seen a stone in Holland big 
enough to throw at a dog, unless brought into it, as is all the 
enormous amount used in constructing their docks and dikes 
and other great public works. After leaving Utrecht, how- 
ever, the face of the country is somewhat more elevated, the 
moisture in the soil less, and good field crops succeed one 
another all along. 

At Emmerich we take the customs examination, and the only 
piece of my luggage examined was a hand-bag holding some 
forty-five cigars, for which a polite German official mulcted me 
in the sum of one and three-quarter marks — about forty-three 
cents of the coin bearing the image of the American eagle. I 
smiled on him benignly, as I had in an unopened trunk another 
full box. We crossed fertile and well-tilled Westphalia, all 
along snug brick farm-houses with red roofs of curved tiles, 
many pretty villages and charming views among the hills, for 
we were in quite a high and dry region there, though the general 
face of the country is level ; on through Hanover — entitled to 
whatever credit may belong to it for giving birth to the first 
of the English Georges ; on through a land less fertile, with a 
soil growing more sandy ; still on in the growing darkness 
until the long rows of distant gas-jets give token of a great 
city near, and we roll into the commodious railway depot of 
Berlin, the capital of the great and mighty German Empire. 

I find this city of Berlin to be handsome, even magnificent. 
It is comparatively modern, and under the fostering care of 
Frederick William, the " Great Elector," its population in 
1685 was only 20,000. Under Frederick the Great, who nour- 
ished it in all ways and lavished money on its architecture, it 
had increased at the time of his death in 1786 to 145,000, and 
from 200,000 in 1819 it grew to 330,000 in 1840, and now, as 



138 *' Unter den Linden^ — The Royal Palace. 

the capital of Prussia, the residence of the Emperor of Ger- 
many, centrally situated in the empire, with large commerce 
through its extensive railway system and navigable rivers, ex- 
tensive manufactures and important money market, it has 
reached a population of 1,300,000 and ranks as the third city in 
Europe. Its situation is not interesting, on a level, sandy plain, 
with the dull river Spree flowing through it, a location not 
unlike Chicago with Lake Michigan omitted, and, like that city, 
brought forward by the steady application of intelligent 
human energy, and enjoying in addition the affectionate foster- 
ing of a long line of rulers. The whole look of the city is 
modern, and there is not much that is picturesque about it, 
not even a cathedral or town-hall. But the eye rests with 
pleasure on broad, regular streets, well paved in granite and 
asphalt, lined with lofty, solid and architecturally fine build- 
ings of stone or stuccoed brick, squares adorned with statues 
and refreshed with fountains, shops rich with the finest goods 
in all kinds, and abounding marks of opulence on every hand. 
I am rather disappointed in the famed " Unter den Linden," 
a street 200 feet wide and a mile long, planted on each side 
with an avenue of trees, from the Brandenburg Gate to the 
statue of Frederick the Great. The old linden-trees seem 
to have come to grief, most likely through the severity of the 
weather, for the wind must come in bitingly, in the winter- 
time, through these wide streets from the broad plain round 
about, and their places are filled with young, smallish trees 
of several sorts, as elms, horse-chestnuts, and not many 
of a new race of lindens. Its width, too, gives it a rather 
dreary look, with rows of plain chairs and benches strung 
along under the trees, and this bareness is not relieved by the 
lively movement of handsome equipages up and down, such 
as we are used to in our larger Arnerican cities, where nearly 
all well to-do citizens keep carriages, as does not seem to be 
at all the case in any continental city we have seen so far. 
But ^veral palaces border it — the plain ancient one of old 
" Kaiser William," where at one of the corner windows on the 
lower floor he loved to station himself down to his last days, 
at precisely ten in the morning, to see his favorite guards 
march by ; the late Emperor Frederick's and the royal palace 
of the present Emperor William, now absent on an excursion 
to Norway, so that we visited the great rooms of state in it. 



" Old Museum.'" — The Royal Palace at Charlotte nburg. 139 

and putting on felt shoes so as not to mar the oak floors, 
traversed some fourteen very rich rooms with good pictures, 
much gilding and some fine effects in decoration. The ball- 
room and royal chapel are quite impressive in those respects. 
The reigning family is Protestant of course, and it struck me 
oddly that a massive crucifix stood on the altar, with one 
great wax taper burning before it. 

The finest building in the city is the " Old Museum," so 
called, opposite the Royal Palace, built in 1824 by the famous 
architect Schinkel, who did a great deal of good work here in 
his time. This is in the Greek style with an Ionic portico of 
nineteen columns, and we saw many good pictures there, and 
among the antiquities the very interesting friezes from the altar 
of Zeus on the Acropolis of Pergamus, found and excavated 
by the engineer Herr Humann in 1879, supposed to have been 
erected by Eumenes II. 180 B.C., in honor of his victory 
over the Gauls there. Most parts of these are thoroughly well 
preserved, fresh, full of life and rich in fancy and fine execu- 
tion. The usually trusty Baedeker says there are no other 
antique remains so good on such a scale. At the entrance is 
Kiss' Amazon. 

We drove out to Charlottenburg, passing through one of 
the five arches of the Brandenburg Gate, the central one of 
which is guarded by sentinels, so that none but royalty may 
pass there. Our road took us through the very handsome 
public park of the Thiergarten, containing six hundred acres 
ornamented with fine avenues of large trees, miniature lakes, 
grassy lawns, natural forests, many statues — an admirable park 
and one of the best we have seen. The Royal Palace at 
Charlottenburg was built for Sophia Charlotte, wife of the 
first Frederick, in 1699, and we wandered through the gor- 
geous rooms of it opening into each other in a vista of 500 feet. 
In one apartment is a fine show of old china of all the facto- 
ries then known, artistically arranged, quite covering the walls, 
and said to be in the same arrangement as when the good 
Charlotte left all these vanities to lie down in dust, as royal 
heads must do at last, and the good Emperor Frederick did 
sadly not many months ago at Potsdam, stopping here a 
few weeks on his way thither. A gloomy, damp, close-smelling 
sort of a place, this Royal Palace of Charlottenburg, despite 
its magnificence. We passed a whole day among the remains, 



140 HohenzoUern Museum. — Potsdam and its Palace. 

traces and tokens of the Great Frederick, a character in whom 
I have always been interested. 

In the HohenzoUern Museum in the Monbijou Chateau 
are a great number of reminiscences of him and his time. 
There is a wax model of his face after death, singularly- 
striking, showing every lineament of his strong face and 
every line of each feature with startling distinctness, his cloth- 
ing from childhood to death, including a uniform and little 
musket in which he underwent the severe drilling to which 
his martinet of a father subjected him, his flute and the manu- 
scripts of his musical compositions, and his horse, Conde, 
cream-colored, and life-like in its state trappings. Interesting, 
too, are the relics of his father, Frederick William I., including 
his turning-lathe, the table of his " Tobacco College," with a 
great array of the long clay pipes used, and the large, com- 
fortable, high-backed, rudely painted wooden chairs in which 
he and his councillors used to sit far into the night in a cloud 
of smoke, drinking deeply, with much horse-play and quarrel- 
ling, as Carlyle so graphically describes in his life of Frederick 
the Great, one of the wonderfulest books in the world. There 
are also many good portraits and busts of characters of that 
time, old tapestry and furniture, cabinets, porcelain, table 
services of kings and electors, including a series of tankards 
going far back 

Visited Potsdam, sixteen miles southwest from the city, 
well situated on an island in the Havel, with some 50,000 
inhabitants, where the Great Frederick erected many build- 
ings and pretty much made the interesting place what it is, 
and where he loved to reside. Crossing the bridge from the 
station to the town, we come at once upon the palace with 
the famous lime-tree, its trunk covered now with metal, but in 
good foliage and bearing itself sturdily, where petitioners 
used to take position and wait for Frederick the Great to 
appear. This palace was built in 1660, but took its present 
form under Frederick in 1750. His rooms are kept as he 
used them, and fine rooms they are, done by the artists he 
brought from France, their ceilings rich in fresco and abun- 
dant gilding on walls and doors in the revived classic fashion 
of the time. Here are his writing-desk, convenient and roomy, 
his music-stand, and snug library with shelves on one side 
filled with French books handsomely bound. Among them is 



The Park and Palace of Sans Souci. 141 

a full set of Voltaire's works bound in red morocco, with many 
marks of reference rising from the gilt upper edges, just as 
Frederick placed them. This library is separated from his 
bedroom only by a heavy silver balustrade, and adjoining it 
is a charming little cabinet with double doors and a cheerful 
outlook from its one window, and a round table in the centre, 
the central part of which could be readily let down into the 
kitchen below and returned without any servants being pres- 
ent, where he entertained confidentially, quite free from all 
espionage. 

We entered the vault under the pulpit of the plain Garrison 
Church where lie the remains of the Great Frederick in a 
chest of lead as they were placed at his funeral, and beside 
him, the only other occupant of the little vaulted room, those 
of his redoubtable father, still and peaceful enough now in 
this plain case of black marble. Several dried wreaths of bay 
rested on the coffin of the Great Frederick, and taking a fresh 
red rose from the jacket of one of the young ladies of my 
party, I placed it among them. The grizzled and stiff old 
soldier who had admitted us smiled grimly, and handed me 
with hesitating carefulness a leaf from a wreath of bay placed 
there in 1813 by the Czar Alexander of Russia, and we 
emerged musingly, soon to find ourselves in the fair and 
famous park of Sans Souci, laid out by French gardeners 
under Frederick's care, in imitation of Versailles. There are 
innumerable statues, single and in groups, along the broad 
avenues, and in the centre a fountain rising to the height of 
112 feet, and falling into a basin more than a hundred feet in 
diameter. From this scene of cultivated sylvan beauty a 
broad flight of steps intersects six terraces leading up dd feet 
to the palace of San Souci. These terraces are prettily culti- 
vated in turf and flowers, and on their sunny steep sides 
grapes ripen on trellises, and I noticed dwarf trees of apples 
and pears in huge earthen pots, laden with ripening fruit of 
more than average size. At the east end of the upper terrace 
the greyhounds and chargers of the Great Frederick are 
buried, and near a statue of Flora is a favorite spot where he 
used to say he would like at last to lie — " Quand je serai la, je 
serai sans souci." The long palace of one story was built for 
him in 1745 and he lived there almost constantly, and his rooms 
are still kept as they were in his life. They are handsome 



142 The Orangery, 

rooms, and show the occupant to have been a man of culti- 
vated and luxurious tastes. His portrait by Pesne in his 
fifty-sixth year is said to be the only one for which he ever 
sat. The features are the same as in the death-mask, and as 
shown in the majestic statue in front of the Royal Palace in 
Berlin. Here also is a small library, chiefly of the French 
classics, and some fine paintings by Pesne, Watteau, Lancret 
and others, and a few ancient busts on the walls. A small 
white marble clock is shown which he used to wind up him- 
self, said to have stopped at the precise moment of his death, 
2. 20 P.M., August 17th, 1786. In the west wing is the un- 
altered room in which William IV. died, and another is shown 
as the one occupied by Voltaire. 

Not far from the palace, on the way to the Orangery, I 
noticed the old wooden windmill, whose owner refused to sell 
it to the great king. We climbed a flight of broad steps to 
look at the fagade of the Orangery, a structure in the Floren- 
tine style, 330 yards in length, completed some forty years 
since, imposing and fine with its many statues, but I cannot 
dwell upon it nor the garden of tropical plants adjoining, nor 
the Palace of Friedrichskron a mile away, founded by the 
Great Frederick in 1763 after the Seven Years' War, and com- 
pleted at a cost of four hundred and fifty thousand pounds. 
We noticed its handsome fagade of 375 feet, and its noble 
dome rising among the lofty trees of the surrounding park, 
but did not seek to enter as we might have done, in the 
absence of its occupant, the Empress Victoria. Her husband, 
the Emperor Frederick, died here a little more than a year 
ago. In fact, we have " supped full " of palaces in the last 
few days, and are glad to get back later in the day into the 
quiet of our rooms at the Kaiserhof and dine in the covered 
court under electric lights, amid much gilding and marble 
and fresco, attended by a civil waiter with English nearly as 
good as that of Frattini, whose manner mildly rebukes my en- 
thusiasm over what we have seen since falling under his care, 
as he requests me from time to time to wait until we shall 
reach Italy, and then, etc., etc. 

I neglected to say that the sandy, level parade-ground over- 
looked by the windows of the old palace in Potsdam, where 
the fathei;: of Frederick the Great used to drill his big grena- 
diers, still serves as a parade-ground, and in his rooms in the 



Dresden. 143 

Sans Souci Palace are shown the perpendicular graduated 
scale by which he used to measure the recruits for his 
gigantic guards, and a long row of stout canes wherewith he 
used to belabor all sorts and conditions of people, his own 
family included. 

In riding and walking about this city of Berlin, I am more 
and more impressed with the solidity, prosperity and magnifi- 
cence of it. In a general way too, the cities on this side of the 
Atlantic are growing and prospering in a manner not so much 
behind those of our own country. The apathy of feudalism, 
the inertness of the old traditional life feels the quickening of 
the modern spirit, and progress is rapid and thorough almost 
everywhere we visit — at least so it seems to me. To illustrate 
the growth of population, take the city of Hanover, once the 
sleepy capital of the kingdom of that name, the cradle of the 
Georges of England and now the capital of a Prussian prov- 
ince. In 1837 its population was only 27,000 ; to-day it is 
160,000. 

August 2. — Left Berlin for Dresden at 8 a.m., arriving at the 
latter city at 11.20. The route by rail is one hundred and 
five miles oyer a sandy, unfertile plain, with few farm-houses 
in sight and the scantiest crops, in spite of a good deal of la- 
bor expended on the land. We passed not more than half a 
dozen small villages in all the distance. Find excellent quar- 
ters in the Hotel Bellevue, close beside the river Elbe, over- 
looked by a pleasant terrace, where one can partake of the 
good rolls and coffee one finds almost everywhere on the Con- 
tinent. 

Dresden is the capital of the kingdom of Saxony, where its 
sovereigns have resided since 1485, and, like almost all towns 
we have so far visited on the Continent, has been greatly re- 
built, and enlarged during the present century in rapid growth 
until it now numbers 245,000 souls. It lies on both sides of 
the Elbe, here about 300 yards wide, artificially made so from 
a width above and below the town of say 150 yards. There is 
a picturesque old bridge always in view from the hotel terrace, 
connecting the old and new parts of the city, lively with much 
passenger traffic on the tramway and sidewalks. This bridge, 
resting on sixteen fine arches and one-quarter of a mile long, 
was built in the thirteenth century. The valley of the Elbe 
here is pleasant, with low ranges of hills in plain sight ; but I 



144 The Palace at Dresden. — The Court Church. 

do not find the environs of Dresden so attractive as the reports 
of travellers usually make them. It is well built, and in view 
of our hotel is an imposing opera house, the Hoftheater, in 
the Renaissance style, by Gottfried Semper, opened in 1878, 
and called one of the finest in Europe," covering an area of 
over 5000 square yards, ornamented with statues and richly 
decorated by eminent artists. On the same square rises the 
Palace, a large, dull structure with the highest tower in the 
city, 331 feet. In a room or series of rooms on the ground 
floor, called the Green Vault, is a wonderfully fine collection 
of curiosities, including the jewels of the reigning family, of 
exceeding value, with a great number of fine diamonds, among 
them one of green color weighing five and one half ounces, set 
as a hat-clasp. There are many large pieces in gold of the 
work of the earlier German goldsmiths, ivory carvings, includ- 
ing one of ninety-two figures, cut out of a single piece, repre- 
senting the " Fall of the Angels," Limoges enamels, and an 
endless number of rare and costly objects in silver, brass, tor- 
toise-shell, crystal and the various precious stones, on which 
an incredible amount of labor has been expended by famous 
artists, making this, it is said, one of the most valuable collec- 
tions of these curious things to be found anywhere. One 
wonders how the rulers of this small state come to possess all 
these treasures, and is obliged to look on them as accumula- 
tions made during those centuries when the divine right of 
kings stood for much more than it does now, and the strong 
hand to take went with the desire to possess, and the means 
to buy were wrung from abject subjects with no one to with- 
stand or gainsay. 

The Roman Catholic Court Church is also on our square 
built in what is called the "baroque style," by which I under- 
stand a commingling of various styles so as to produce a sort 
of harmonious and not unpleasing effect. This church dates 
from 1737 and has some sixty statues of saints on the parapets 
and at the entrances. We attended mass there Sunday morn- 
ing, as the music is notable, and listened with pleasure to the 
magnificent baritone voice of the officiating priest intoning 
the prayers and the soprano in the choir, the only female voice, 
Frattini says, to be heard in any Catholic church in Europe. 
But the old kings of Saxony were Protestant, and it will be re- 
called that stout Ernest of Saxony was one of Luther's stanch- 



The Picture Gallery. 145 

est friends and supporters, and possibly this pure female voice 
rising from the braided melody of the numerous choir is a 
lingering reminiscence of those days when old bands of church 
practice and custom were relaxed and women mingled in the 
worship of God more openly than under the Romish forms. 

But the crowning attraction of Dresden is its Picture Gallery, 
housed in an ample and handsome museum designed by the 
architect Semper, completed in 1854, and ranking as one of 
the finest collections of pictures in the world. I cannot dwell 
at length on the many choice examples of the various schools 
of painting shown here. Here are the " Sacrifice of Abraham," 
by Andrea del Sarto ; " The Madonna Enthroned," " Madonna 
with St. Sebastian," "The Holy Night," "The Madonna and 
St. George," all by Correggio ; " The Tribute Money" and 
portrait of his daughter Lavinia, by Titian ; masterpieces 
of Paul Veronese, Tintoretto, Velasquez, Murillo, Claude Lor- 
raine, Watteau, Nicolas Poussin, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rem- 
brandt — his portrait of his wife, Saskia, portrait of himself 
with her on his knee, " Samson's Riddle," " Manoah's Sacrifice" 
— Gerard Dou, Paul Potter, Wouverman, and the long list of 
Flemish, Dutch and German painters whose works I have seen 
and partly noted elsewhere. Here are Diirer's " Crucifixion," 
Holbein's portrait of Morett the English goldsmith, two 
most charming pictures by Angelica Kauffmann and two by 
Heinrich Hofmann, " The Child Jesus in the Temple" and the 
" Woman Taken in Adultery before Christ," worthy to rank, 
as it seems to me, with the works of the great masters. 
But what can I say of the exceeding glory of the " Sistine 
Madonna," by Raphael, hanging in a quiet and almost 
sacred room, the only picture there, whither visitors come 
from the connecting halls where they have chattered and 
criticised straying carelessly and noisily, to uncover their 
heads as in a holy place and softly and with no words to gaze 
long and tenderly on this divine apparition ? Who can do so 
unmoved ? There stands the Virgin Mother blessed above all 
women, holding to her breast the infant Redeemer, the beauty 
of her face faintly shadowed by the awful mystery whose full 
import she cannot yet have comprehended. What unfathom- 
able depths in those tender, luminous eyes, what saintly beauty 
in all those Oriental features ! What composure of maternity 
in them touched with something of shy virginity, of modest 
10 



146 The Dresden Porcelains. 

pride, of vague jealous fear, of happy awe ! No wonder the 
world comes to admire and reverence and worship. And 
what a wonderful thing it is that the brain and heart and hand 
of man can with a few earthy pigments create so glorious an 
image, looking as if ready to step down to earth with throbbing 
heart and lips informed with human speech ! 

We drove across the old bridge through the new town and 
by a long, rising road, passed in the suburbs the picturesque 
house looking down on the river, where Schiller lived for a 
time with his friend Korner, author of 'the " Song of the Sword," 
and crossed the Elbe, on our way back to town, by an awkward 
ferry-boat, which did its work handily enough, and passed 
through the small but pretty Briihl Terrace, well kept and 
enriched with frequent statues of famous men. 

I was wakened one morning hereby the shrill notes of some 
not at all musical wind instrument, and looking out of the 
window saw a group of soldiers collected at the foot of a long 
iron ladder running up the lofty side of the opera house, being 
drilled in evolutions on it as firemen and regulating their 
movements by the notes of the aforesaid instrument in the 
mouth of the officer in charge. Three men mounted the ladder 
at a time, some distance apart, with a common and measured 
step, so deliberate as to be almost amusingly solemn, and 
fastening with simultaneous motions a strap each wore round 
the waist by a hook to a rung of the ladder, let go their hands 
and accustomed themselves to using them freely and to bend 
backward from the waist so as to be at liberty to expend their 
force in any action required in the exigencies of a fire. They 
then descended in the same uniform manner, and others took 
their places. All these movements were made with automatic 
precision. 

The royal manufactory of the famous Dresden porcelains is 
at Meissen, fourteen miles from here. This was founded in 
17 lo, when the chemist Bottger discovered how to make 
" china." We visited the show and sales rooms of the com- 
pany in the city, and saw most beautiful productions — vases, 
plaques, figures, etc. The most expensive of their dinner 
sets of one hundred and twenty-four pieces in stock cost 
three hundred and fifty dollars here. Sets of higher cost are 
only made to order and easily run into the thousands. The 
paternal government of Uncle Sam claps a duty of sixty per 



Leave Dresderi for Frankfort. 147 

cent on these wares in order that some New Jersey potterie 
may experiment, as they have been doing for fifty years. 
Without this enormous duty, the manager said sadly, they 
would do a large business with America. 

Our hotel here is the best we have found since the Bellevue in 
Brussels, and very pleasant it is to sit under the striped awning 
swung over the terrace of tessellated marble, festooned at the 
sides with clambering vines, the brown Elbe with its lazy boats 
just below, the gray old many-arched bridge near by on the 
right, and on the opposite shore the dull red roofs of ancient 
houses with queer windows in them, so arched in tiles that a pair 
of them look like eyes staring unwinkingly at you. Here we 
order our meals served at one of the many little tables and 
rest dreamily. 

August 6. — Left Dresden for Frankfort at 8.30 a.m. and 
arrived there at 9.45 p.m. Rooms at the Hotel d'Angleterre 
on the Rossmarkt, the small but principal square of the city. 
We changed cars at Leipsic at 10.45, the intermediate country 
between that city and Dresden being flat, the soil light and 
sandy, but well cultivated. At Halle we cross the river Saale, 
a muddy water, here some thirty feet wide, and farther on pass 
along the larger of the two Mansfeld lakes, the only salt water 
in Germany. Twenty-four miles from Halle is Eisleben, the 
birthplace of Luther in 1483. The house in which he was 
born and another in which he died here in 1546 are both 
standing. There are silver-mines near here employing over 
two thousand men. The face of the country grows more 
interesting as we advance, and at Wallhausen begins a beauti- 
ful and fertile region lying along the river Helme, a small 
brown stream. Many peaceful villages are passed, the most 
considerable being Nordhausen on the southern slope of the 
Harz Mountains, Heiligenstadt on the little river Leine, and 
Eichenberg. Thence down the valley of the Werrato Witzen- 
hausen, with charming scenery all along, changing trains 
again at Cassel on the Fulda, once the capital of the Electorate 
of Hessen and now the seat of the government of the Prussian 
province of Hesse-Nassau. In the centre of the Friedrichs- 
Platz stands the statue of the Landgrave Frederick IL, who 
furnished the English during our war for Independence with 
twelve thousand of his subjects, the hated Hessians, for twenty- 
two million dollars, nearly two thousand dollars per head. 



148 Marburg. 

These poor wretches, torn from their homes and leaving their 
bones to whiten in an alien land beyond the sea and their 
memory to the continuing execration of a great nation, had 
no interest whatever in the war they were engaged in, and 
were sold bodily to fill the treasury of a petty prince. The 
world moves, however, and a like act could not possibly occur 
again in any part of the civilized world. 

The station-masters on the German roads are gorgeous in 
the extreme. The first one I noticed chanced to be a man 
of a somewhat warlike carriage and 'mien, and for a moment 
when considering him I really took him to be a personage of 
high military rank. His blue double-breasted coat with great 
gilt buttons and black velvet cuffs, these and the collar faced 
with a heavy gilt braid, a sort of incipient epaulette sprouting 
from a big gilt button on each shoulder, a red cap also heavily 
gilded in the band, and dark broadcloth trousers with a red 
stripe down the leg constituted him a warrior in appearance 
fit to figure in one of Wouverman's battle-pieces. And to think 
that his mission is to come out when the train approaches, 
stare sternly at the passengers for a space, and then pull a 
bell to announce the time for leaving ! 

A most picturesque town is Marburg, with its red-roofed 
houses, climbing in semicircular tiers up a precipitous hill 
about the castle at the top, an imposing, well-preserved structure 
where in 1520 Luther, Zwingli and Melanchthon with other Re- 
formers held a conference to try and come to an agreement upon 
the nature of the Eucharist, which failed because of Luther's 
holding fast to the exact words, '''' Hoc est corpus ineuni" which 
he wrote in large letters on the table. There is a prosperous 
university here founded in 1527, attended by a thousand 
students. Frattini pointed out one of these at the station 
with a long purple scar on his left cheek, got by the slash of a 
sword in a duel, and still another, out of the four to 
be seen in red caps, with a similar mark of foolish courage. 
The students are said to be v^ery proud of these scars, and 
exaggerate them by irritation during their healing. From the 
level at the foot of the hill rise the towers of the Church of St. 
Elizabeth, pure and noble, to the height of 310 feet. 

We follow the fertile valley of the Lahn, with old villages 
of timber-framed houses filled in with brick, and half a dozen 
ruined castles frowning darkly from the heights on either side 



Frankfort on-the-Main. — Rdmerberg Market-Place. 149 

in the advancing twilight, through Friedberg, once a free 
imperial city, with its well-preserved, handsome watch-tower, 
165 feet high, and at last, slackening speed in a maze of many- 
colored lights, come to a stand in "the huge new Central Rail- 
way Station of Frankfort-on-the-Main. This important city 
with its 154,000 inhabitants lies on the right bank of the Main 
in a spacious plain, with the Taunus range of hills all about. 
Down to 1866 it was one of the free towns of the German 
Confederation and the seat of the Diet, but now belongs to 
Prussia. Although an old city, its antiquity is being rapidly 
modernized away, and at the rate changes are going on, not only 
here but everywhere else in fact, the relics of the mediaevel ages 
in a very few years will be largely swept away. In the square 
before our hotel is a fine monument to Gutenberg, designed 
by Launitz and erected in 1858. It represents himself, Faust 
and Schoffer of life size. On the pedestal are portrait heads 
of fourteen famous printers, among them Caxton. We visited 
the house of Goethe's father, where the poet was born August 
28th, 1749, a large, comfortable mansion, probably among the 
best of the city at the time it was built. It contains many 
memorials of his family and himself, among these many 
busts and portraits, remarkable for their unlikeness to one 
another. 

Very interesting is the Romerberg market-place, the pictu- 
resque old buildings around which are mostly unchanged. 
Among them the Romer, built in 1405, with its three lofty 
gables and broad, pointed doorways, and halls where the 
electors used to choose the emperor and where he dined with 
them afterward, after showing himself to the people from 
the balcony. The lofty dining-hall is hung with portraits of 
the emperors, from Charlemagne down, presented by German 
princes, art and other associations and private persons— a 
gallery of imposing portraits, as like their subjects, it may 
be presumed, as the sculptured heads of the English kings in 
the minster at York. 

Until the present century no Jew was permitted to enter this 
square, and the Judengasse or Jews' Street, where the people 
of that enterprising nationality were compelled to reside, 
was closed at night and during Sundays, a precaution which 
does not seem to have hindered them from driving a good 
business in the daytime, for here, midway of the old Jews' 



150 Homburg. — Its Springs. 

Street, now handsomely rebuilt and christened Borne-Strasse, 
Stands at No. 148, as it stood a hundred years ago, the well- 
looking residence of the founder of the Rothschild family. 
Their present place of business is near by on the corner, a 
huge, dull, silent-looking house of massive stone. 

The opera house is very imposing. We went to a little 
museum called the Ariadneum, and saw the group of Ariadne 
on the panther by Dannecker, the Stuttgart sculptor, so well 
known in America from the little Parian copies of it. It is 
shown in a small circular room, the light excluded except 
from above, whence it falls through a flesh-colored curtain 
upon the beautiful figure as it slowly revolves on its pedestal 
to meet the eye of the spectator. 

There is an old bridge of red sandstone over the Main, built 
in 1342. Near by the statue of Charlemagne in a recess of 
the parapet half way over, is a very old figure of Christ on an 
iron cross surmounted by a cock, the image of the one with 
which the architect paid his vow to sacrifice to the devil the 
first living creature crossing the bridge. 

August 7. — At 3.30. P.M. by rail to Homburg, that naughty old 
watering-place, fourteen miles north of Frankfort, and found 
shelter in the crowded Four Seasons, this being the height of 
the fashionable season. This little town of 8500 inhabitants is 
charmingly situated on a low spur of the Taunus Mountains, 
which projects itself into a wide, fertile valley, the higher 
ranges of the same hills lying three miles distant, and culmi- 
nating in the Great Feldberg, 2900 feet high. Some ten 
to twelve thousand visitors come here annually to enjoy 
the diversions and drink the water of half a dozen springs of 
saline and chalybeate properties, and I should judge, from the 
taste and the account of them by Fr. Hoeber, M.D., "Sanitary 
Councillor to H.M. the King of Prussia" — a fair pamphlet in 
which I invested one mark and eighty pfeaning — quite the 
same as half a dozen which might be selected out of the some 
thirty now gushing at Saratoga. These springs are situated 
in the midst of prettily wooded grounds, and in their long, 
shaded avenues, during the hours when the waters are taken 
from seven to nine in the morning, a great multitude of 
people of both sexes and all ages and conditions of physical 
being promenade about, waiting the time for a second or 
third glass from some prescribed spring or attending upon 



The Cursaal. 151 

the complete digestion of the regular allowance to the accom- 
paniment of a good band. 

There are agreeable walks into the neighboring country for 
the more hardy and adventurous visitors and an extensive 
tennis lawn rimmed round with stately and flourishing forest- 
trees, specially affected by the younger people, who, scattered 
prettily about on the rich turf, display their graceful skill to 
each other and to the groups of comfortable older people 
seated in stuffed willow chairs under great gaudy umbrellas. 
There is very little driving, and nothing of the fine show of 
equipages we see at Saratoga. All is quiet and orderly, with 
no appearance of the brilliant wickedness we read about in 
books written twenty years ago. But the gaming-tables 
here then attracted male and female adventurers from all 
Europe, and fortunes were lost and made — chiefly lost — on 
the green cloth spread in the gorgeous halls of Mons. Blanc, 
whose prosperity was blighted some seventeen years ago by 
the fiat of the government, which closed his establishment. 
This gentleman gracefully yielded and presented the build- 
ing and fair grounds adjoining to the town, and these now 
form the Cursaal, and his costly apartments are used as 
dancing-hall, concert, reading-rooms, etc. On the north side, 
fronting the grounds, extends a wide, light piazza for some 
300 feet, with a few broad steps leading down to a wide terrace 
of equal length, from which is easy descent to the grounds 
themselves. The piazza is set with little tables, where light 
refreshments may be ordered ; the terrace-floor is of smooth, 
firm earth strown thick with fine sand, and here all the world 
comes in the evening to promenade back and forth in the full 
electric light, the ladies in handsome costumes looking their 
best, the younger ones under the eyes of observant parents or 
chaperones, willing to captivate and not unwilling to be capti- 
vated in turn. One sees a pretty face or figure now and then — 
one where in a like gathering in America he would see ten. 
It cannot be said that the German maidens here are well- 
favored. There are many solid, fresh-looking English families, 
with a sprinkling of Americans, the latter quite at home and 
bearing themselves with easy nonchalance, as if Homburg 
were the most natural place in the world for them. Many 
stylish, self-possessed German officers saunter by in handsome 
uniforms, the bright metal scabbards of their long, trailing 



153 The Saalburg. 

swords leaving a line in the sandy terrace as they pass. By ten 
o'clock the excellent band has finished its programme, the 
company melts away into the numerous hotels and more 
numerous pensions, and the mild dissipation is ended. 

We made a long drive to the Saalburg, said to be the remains 
of the walls of a Roman castle built about the year 70 a.d. to 
protect the Germanic provinces Rome had conquered from 
the incursions of other German tribes. These ruins are on 
the lower summit of the line of the Taunus range, 1300 feet 
above the sea-level, and look to the unpracticed eye like a 
row of stone-walled cellars from which the houses over them 
had been removed — very prosaic memorials of old Rome, if 
such they be. The widow of the late Emperor Frederick 
has a castellated residence near the town in spacious grounds, 
and is at present residing here. Everything indicates that 
Homburg is a healthful, as it certainly is a pleasant and 
cheerful resort. 

August 10. — Left for Frankfort at 10 a.m., and at 11 took 
train there for Strassburg, arriving at 5.30 p.m. to find pleas- 
ant rooms at the Hotel Ville de Paris. Seventeen miles from 
Frankfort we reach Darmstadt, the capital of the Grand 
Duchy of Hessen, a bright-looking town of 54,000 souls. 
Here begins the Bergstrasse, an old road made by the 
Romans and continued in repair and use, which skirts the 
rounded hills of the Odenwald range for twenty-seven miles 
to Heidelberg. The railway lies parallel to this road, the 
slopes of the Odenwald fresh with vines and fruit-trees and 
frequent ruins of castles and towers on the left and a wide 
expanse of cultivated plain on the right. These towers, 
perched on high commanding points, were in the middle 
ages the nests of robber barons and lawless knights, whence 
they swooped down on the defenceless ;- and I made for our 
solace, as we went along at the slow German rate of about 
twenty-five miles an hour, many a picture of timid merchants 
with long trains of sumpter-horses laden with rich stuffs, toil- 
fully wending northward, with many an anxious glance at 
these frowning keeps, momently expecting, and not in vain, 
to hear the blast of the warder's horn, sharply on the lookout 
for their approach. Then the hot mounting in the court-yard, 
the clang of steel, the resounding drawbridge as the maraud- 
ing band rides clattering over it, the noonday sun glancing 



Strassburg. — Its Cathedral. 153 

from helm and lance, the swift attack, the pillage, the pale 
trader left penniless, fortunate if his life be spared, the gay 
return to the mountain fastness with the rich booty, and the 
wild carouse at night by the red glare of flaming torches, 
lighting up the warlike furnishing of the great hall. These 
are things of the past, but the gray strongholds stand along 
the Odenwald, memorials of those fierce and bloody centuries 
when war and rapine were the vocation of the strong, and 
society knew but two classes, the oppressor and the op- 
pressed. 

I hoped that in old Strassburg we should find mediaeval 
architecture and unusual and strange customs, manners and 
costumes. The first thing I noticed on emerging from the 
station was a tramcar of the latest fashion pulled by a pair of 
solid horses on an excellent track along a modern street 
paved with square granite blocks, a line of hackney landaus, 
and pedestrians in easy garments, the like of which are shown 
in the windows of the Bowery clothing-stores. Still, the 
march of innovation has spared many a strange old building 
in out-of-the-way streets crooked and narrow, as if shrinking 
together and seeking to hide themselves. A feature new to 
me appears in these old houses ; enormously high and steep 
roofs mostly with four ranges of queer dormer-windows in 
them. But one would hardly find Strassburg attractive 
enough to warrant a visit except for its cathedral, and this 
will amply repay any pains. I have given up the description 
of these noblest of man's works in dumb despair. This was 
three hundred years building, a stretch of time extending 
from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, during which time 
the Romanesque style passed by gradations into the pure 
Gothic, so that the various parts show examples of all styles. 
Many famous architects gave their lives to the work in turn, 
among them Erwin von Steinbach, a rare soul, to whom is 
due the glorious west fagade with three richly carved portals, 
said to be among the finest Gothic works in the world, and 
the great rose-window above them, exquisite as the flower it 
is named after, with its wonderful old glass. The entire 
facade, including the Gothic Three Portals, is wrought in 
delicate tracery, and ornamented with hundreds of sculptured 
figures and imposing statues. From it rises the single tower 
to the dizzy height of 465 feet, 30 feet higher than the dome 



154 Strassburg's Famous Clock. 

of St. Peter's in Rome. It is of delicate open work and the 
distant summit is airy and almost bodiless, like the fabric of 
a dream. The interior with its broad central aisle is har- 
monious and impressive, altogether a thing of beauty. The 
material is chiefly a red sandstone which resists the tooth of 
time so well, that the exterior shows few marks of age, and 
the injuries done by the bombarding Germans in 1870 have 
been carefully repaired. 

In the south transept is the famous clock built by 
Schwilgue, a Strassburg clockmaker, in 1838-42, to replace an 
older one constructed in 157 1, which was in use down to 1789. 
The beautifully painted case of the old one is all that was 
used in the new. It exhibits itself at noon every day, and on 
Sunday we attended the manifestations. Precisely at twelve 
o'clock a figure of Death strikes the hour on a bell in his left 
hand with a hammer in his right, and as he begins, an image 
of a genius turns the hour-glass he is holding ; before the image 
of Christ higher up the twelve apostles pass in order bowing 
before Him while He waves them a benediction, and a cock 
on His right, looking like life, flaps his wings and crows three 
times in the most natural manner. The quarters are struck 
in turn by four images : the first of Childhood, the second of 
Youth, the third of Manhood and the fourth of Old Age. 
Each day its symbolic deity moves out of a niche, Apollo for 
Sunday, Diana for Monday, and so on. I bought a thin 
pamphlet of a handsome and much-begilt verger with a long 
staff of office, and have read with interest what this wonderful 
piece of mechanism is capable of, and will say in brief that it 
exhibits a perpetual calendar with the variable feasts, an 
orrery after the Copernican system, showing the phases of 
the moon, the eclipses of the sun and moon calculated for all 
time, a celestial globe with the precession of the equinoxes, and 
so on, the whole regulating itself and fitting its motions to 
those of the seasons — altogether a wonder of a clock. 

In the Protestant Church of St. Thomas, which dates back 
to 1273, is a magnificent and strikingly original monument 
erected to Marshal Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy, done by 
Pigalle at the order of Louis XV. of France. It was finished 
in 1776, after twenty years of labor. Very impressive is the 
manly figure of the Marshal as he steps fearlessly forward 
to the open coffin to which the half-shrouded figure of Death 



P&te de foie gras. 155 

is beckoning him, while an agonizing female typifying 
France, strives to detain him, and Hercules leaning mourn- 
fully on his club, looks helplessly on. The figures are of 
heroic size, and the whole is startlingly realistic. 

Noticed a huge stork's nest on the broad capstone of a 
stack of chimneys rising from a lofty roof. It is said that 
formerly great numbers of these birds inhabited the roofs 
in this manner, but the bombardment in 1S70 frightened 
them away. 

This city has long had a reputation for \ts pate de foie gras, 
which it continues to prepare and export in great quantity. 
Frattini says that to obtain the enormous livers of which two 
fill one of the cans sold in the shops, the geese are nailed by 
the feet to the floor of a warm room and stuffed with food to 
the point where the enlarged livers threaten suffocation and 
then killed. I did not verify this statement. 

Strassburg, with its 100,000 inhabitants, is the capital of 
Alsace and Lorraine, the seat of the governor and administra- 
tion of that province, the headquarters of the 15th Corps of 
the German Army and the see of a Roman Catholic bishop. 
It is situated on the river 111 two miles from the Rhine, and is 
connected with the latter by a canal. Louis XIV. seized it in 
1681, without the shadow of a cause in a time of peace, having 
before annexed to France the rest of Alsace, and time brought 
its revenge in 1870, when Germany with a strong arm took it 
back. It has always been looked on as a place of great 
strategical importance and kept heavily fortified. It with- 
stood a siege by the Germans in 1870 for thirty days, during 
which the citadel and other works erected by the great 
engineer Vauban in 1682 were destroyed by the bombs of the 
besiegers, and many parts of the town, including the Cathe- 
dral, suffered greatly. But all damages have been repaired 
and a great system of earthworks established all around the 
town, extending out for some five miles. As there are twenty- 
five thousand soldiers stationed here, they are to be met 
everywhere, as in all the German cities we visit, hearty, 
vigorous young men, looking well used to labor, marching, 
drilling, and strolling about the streets. 

August 12. — At 8 A.M. left Strassburg by rail and a few miles 
out, at Offenburg, changed to a train on the Schwarzwald 
Railway, running directly across the mountainous region 



156 The Black Forest. 

known as the Black Forest, named so probably from the dark 
masses of pine which closely clothe all the hills and valleys of 
this extensive tract. We enter upon the mountains by the 
fertile valley of the bright little stream called Kinzig, rounded 
mountains sloping gently down to it, on one of which, vine- 
clad, rises the Chateau of Ortenberg, overlooking a village of 
the same name. At Gengenbach, six and one half miles away, 
we have risen 580 feet, and note the fine old Benedictine Abbey 
there. At Hausach the road leaves the valley of the Kinzig 
and ascends the picturesque valley of the Gutach, a clear little 
stream, babbling like the New England brooks, and at Horn- 
berg, twenty-seven miles from Offenburgow, on the level plain, 
we have risen 1265 feet. All about are charming pictures 
capped by a chateau on a precipitous hill. At Triberg, eight 
miles farther on, in the heart of the Black Forest, we are 2000 
feet above the sea, and at St. Georgen, ten miles away, 2660, 
winding up the heights in loops and zigzags — so that often 
we see a stretch of the road in a parallel line below us — over 
lofty viaducts and through twenty- six tunnels in eighteen 
miles. The highest point reached is at Sommerau, 2730 feet, 
the watershed of the Rhine and Danube, where we emerge 
through a tunnel of 1852 yards, the whole constituting a 
wonderful feat of engineering, reminding one of the Colorado 
Division of the Union Pacific and Denver and Rio Grande 
railways. 

At St. Georgen we enter the valley of the Brigach, a little 
mountain stream which, running twenty miles, unites at 
Donaueschingen with the Brege, a like stream, and forms the 
great Danube, which, after traversing western Germany, 
discharges its enormous volume of water into the Black Sea, 
1872 miles away as the river runs. We cross the plateau and 
descend the gradually sloping side of the mountain range to 
Donaueschingen, thence along the flat and marshy line of the 
Danube, giving, like a dull boy, little indication of the great- 
ness before it. At Singen we turn southward to Schaffhausen 
and reach the excellent Hotel Schweizerhof at Newhausen at 
3 P.M., and are met and served by brown, healthy maidens 
in picturesque Swiss costumes. 

A great many beautiful scenes passed under our eyes during 
the passage of the Black Forest, heightened by the strange and 
quaint character ot the construction of the dwellings, both in the 



The Falls of the Rhine. 157 

villages and country-side, all along the way. Deep in the green 
recesses of the hills and along the narrow valleys and on the 
mountain-sides stand long, one-story weather-browned wooden 
houses with steep thatched roofs twice as high as themselves 
and balconied gables hooded by the drooping projection of the 
roof. Often, especially in the little villages, these houses are 
of two stories, with a wide, open balcony running all along 
the sides. Many were the ruined castles and chateaux perched 
on high among the mountains. Nigh a score of these we saw 
during the day, and very notable among them, as we skirt the 
Hohgau, are those of Hohensinger and Hohentwiel, frowning 
from the summit of lofty, detached volcanic cones, well-nigh 
inaccessible to man and impregnable before the use of gun- 
powder. The latter stronghold is famous in German song 
and story. 

At Neuhausen, in full view of the balcony of our rooms at 
the hotel, are the famous Falls of the Rhine. The river 
above — the water of the deepest green — is something over 500 
feet wide and descends in three almost continuous leaps 
some 60 feet, broken into the whitest foam, with a deep 
roar not so heavy as to be disagreeable to the ear. It is usual 
to count the swift but not striking rapids above as a part of 
the falls, and call the whole 100 feet. Although not great 
compared with several in our country, these are consid- 
ered among the finest in Europe, and taken in connection 
with the charming surroundings, the Falls of the Rhine are to 
be greatly commended, and I do hereby commend them. 
Every evening a strong electric light is thrown upon them, and 
they are lit up by many Bengal lights, red and green and 
blue, along the sides and from the craggy peak rising in the 
middle of the stream. The effect is beautiful, and noticeable 
in the bills of the guests, where each one is charged a mark 
toward the expense of the exhibition, and cheap enough, as 
any one will admit who has seen the fairy effect upon the 
foamy green of the waters and the old gray turreted walls 
of the Schloss Munoth on the high bank opposite the garden of 
the Hotel Schweizerhof. May they flow and foam and murmur 
many a year, and the good hotel stand facing them as now. 

August 13. — Were driven in a comfortable omnibus some- 
thing over a mile up to Schaffhausen, where at 10 a.m. we 
took a little steamboat up the Rhine to Constance. Schaff- 



158 Schaff hail sen. 

hausen is the capital of the Swiss canton of the same name, has 
nearly 12,000 inhabitants and is quaint and picturesque, words 
I find myself often using for the want of better in my slender 
vocabulary. In the Cathedral hangs a big bell cast in i486, 
with a Latin inscription, ^' Vivos voco : 7nortiios plango : fulgura 
frango." The Castle of Munot has almost the finest round- 
tower I have seen, with a conical projecting cap. 

The squat captain of our little boat has, I think, the most 
remarkable nose ever bestowed on man. It resembles an 
enormous toad in a high state of inflammation applied to his 
face back up, a nose corrugated, carbuncled, Bardolphian, 
lustrous, wonderful ! The late Dr. Valentine Mott would 
have begged of its owner the favor of removing it without 
charge. The crew in uniforms do not hold themselves better 
than the passengers, but condescend to occupy the choicest 
positions under the awning, and smoke and enjoy themselves, 
the captain looking on, probably to see that the passengers do 
not insult them. At one landing a jovial person with a green 
apron got aboard, and a smart shower falling, he took posi- 
tion under the awning and entertained the crew, who 
gathered about, with waggish stories, which caused pro- 
digious laughter and quite hindered any one from giving 
attention to anything else. 

We steamed up against the stiff current of the beautiful 
Rhine, the northern bank on our left rising into gentle 
hills covered with vines lying warmly to the sun, the southern 
into woody stretches and cultivated fields. Wise and solemn 
storks sat here and there on the trees by the shore and would 
not stir for all the noise made to frighten them. Old gray 
and brown villages repose sleepily on either side, often the 
time-stained walls of the street next the water being washed 
by the current. 

At Stein is a Rathhaus charming to see, and on a hill near 
Berlingen rises a chateau built by Eugene Beauharnais, son 
of the Empress Josephine by her first husband, and a little 
farther on a residence of his sister, Hortense, the mother of 
Napoleon III., and now owned by the ex-Empress Eugenie. 
The river has widened before this point is reached into the 
broad Untersee, but narrows again as we pass Gottlieben, in 
the chetteau of which Huss and Jerome of Prague were con- 
fined before their execution. 



Constance. 159 

Landed at the pier in Constance at 1.30 p.m. and found 
excellent apartments ready at the Konstanzer Hof, charmingly 
situated where the river emerges from the lake. Constance 
— Konstanz — is a very old city, and formerly much more pros- 
perous than now. A population of 40,000 has dwindled away 
during the last three centuries to 14,000. It was a free town 
until 1548, but became subject to Austria after the Reforma- 
tion, and in 1805 became a part of Baden, so that it is now 
a German city. It is agreeably situated on the Rhine at the 
northwest extremity of Lake Constance, which stretches away 
before it for forty miles, with a width of some seven miles. 
It is really a huge basin of the waters of the Rhine. So far 
as we can see, the shores are gently sloping, with a pleasant 
diversity of wood and cultivated fields, but to the eastward 
would be seen, did the weather permit, the chain of the 
Appenzell Alps with their snow-clad peak of the Sentis, all shut 
from us in our two days here by banks of sullen clouds. 
The Cathedral dates from 1052, but has been rebuilt, and 
its open spire of light gray sandstone is quite modern. 
It has at the western portal doors of oak beautifully carved 
by Haider in 1470, and exquisite wrought-iron screens before 
several of the chapels. A stone is pointed out in the nave 
where Huss is said to have stood when he received his death 
sentence, and in the Kaufhaus or Town Hall is the great 
Council Chamber where the conclave of cardinals met in 1414. 
The massive oak pillars supporting the roof still stand, and 
the form and structure are unchanged, but it has lately been 
wainscoted anew and decorated with frescoes illustrating the 
history of the town. West of the city and outside the walls as 
it then was is the spot where Jerome of Prague and Huss 
were burned in 1416, marked by a great boulder with inscrip- 
tions. 

We were served at dinner with a very good fish something 
like our sea-bass, called felchen, and, as I was informed, 
peculiar to the lake. 

August 15. — Left for Zurich by rail at 10 a.m. Although 
the distance is only seventy-six miles, we were three and a 
half hours making it. We followed the Rhine back on the 
route we came as far as Stein, reviewing the points of interest 
along its banks and again admiring specially the well-pre- 
served Castle of Hohenklingen, dominating the valley from 



160 Zurich. 

a lofty point opposite Stein. Turning to the left at this 
point we cross the Thur over a fine bridge 148 feet high, 
change cars at Winterthur, and half an hour later are at the 
charmingly situated Hotel Baur au Lac, whose well-kept 
gardens run down to the narrow lake of Zurich, stretching 
away southeast for twenty-five miles, its waters of a pale green 
hue. The country we passed over to-day is about 1500 feet 
above the sea-level, and presents in its vegetation an ap- 
pearance very like upper New England. The same kinds of 
crops are grown, with wayside weeds and flowers mostly the 
same. I noticed a little patch of Indian corn doing as well as 
could be expected among strangers and in an alien soil, where, 
I fear me, it is more mocked at than respected. What do the 
benighted people of this Continent know of the supreme satis- 
faction of boiled corn on the ear, succotash and fried mush ? 
Cows are worked in harness singly and in pairs, the draught 
being on a stuffed band of leather applied just below the 
horns. They work contentedly and easily, with moderate 
loads, and look in good condition. All along, wherever we 
have been on the Continent, women work in the fields in 
numbers, I should say, equal to the men, but this may be 
especially the case in the time of harvest. The tools used 
seemed to one accustomed to the light, handy implements of 
our farmers, clumsy and bungling, but the work seems to be 
well and quickly done with them. I noticed a farmer mowing 
a short, second growth of clover with a most awkward scythe, 
having only one long handle, which he clutched near the top 
in such a way that nothing could be expected of him, but the 
swath he cut was clean and smooth as could be wished. 

Zurich is a handsome town of 25,000 population, situated at 
the north end of the lake of the same name, on the river Lim- 
mat, which drains the lake into the Rhine. It is the capital 
of the canton of the same name, is a prosperous city with im- 
portant manufactories of silk and cotton. Unless one takes 
pains to turn aside to get into them, he might stay here a 
month and see no streets not lately built up in solid and 
expensive styles, chiefly of excellent stone. Made a trip up 
the lake extendingits entire length of twenty-five miles in a com- 
fortable steamboat doing business up and down the lake, stop- 
ping at many points on the north side both in going and coming. 
This long, narrow, deep and winding sheet of clearest water 



Vie7v fro7ii the Uetlibcrg. 161 

in a rim of gradually rising hills, or rather mountains, with 
many an old village and single farm-house amid the green 
meadows and tilled fields of the more level shores, then 
orchards and sloping pastures, and, higher still, woodlands 
open to the sun. But on the north shore, with a southern 
exposure, miles of vines attached to short stakes in even, well- 
tended rows bask in the hot sun, promising fruitful clusters 
and a fair wine later on. The trip used up the greater part 
of the day, and the whole scene lay before the bodily eye like 
the vision of a peaceful dream. Sweet bells answered one 
another across the lake out of square, gray towers tipped with 
tall, slim spires of dull red, and, as we neared Rapperswyl, 
the low, rich little island of Ufnau rose fair with its Abbey of 
Einsiedeln, a ruin now, where intrepid Ulrich von Hutton, the 
stout Reformer, came for refuge from his enemies, and died 
in 1523. How true it is that men live in deeds, not years ! 
He died at the age of thirty-six. 

We lunched at Rapperswyl, and climbed the Lindenhof and 
had a wide view of great beauty from among the huge lime- 
trees in front of the old Schloss, now a museum of articles 
relating to Poland, of not much interest. We should have 
had the Appenzell range of the Alps in good view all day, but 
heavy clouds have hid the east since our arrival, and not a 
single peak shone on our waiting eyes until on the morning 
we left Zurich, as we attained the top of the Uetliberg, the 
northernmost point of the Albis range, 2864 feet high, we 
had a glorious view, sweeping from the Sentis to the Jungfrau, 
and just in front the Rigi and Pilatus. But for envious clouds 
in the north we might have seen the peaks of the Hohgau, 
Hohentwiel, etc. The railway up the Uetliberg, constructed 
in the usual way, only that the engines run behind the trains, 
rises about 1500 feet in five and one-half miles. A beautiful 
panorama is spread before the observer along the slowly wind- 
ing way to the summit, Zurich town and lake, many a soft and 
bold valley, shining village and lofty snow-clad mountain. 

August J"]. — Came by railway to Lucerne, forty-one and one- 
half miles, in two and one-half hours, through pleasing moun- 
tain scenery, with many a verdant valley and narrow meadow 
and smiling pasture sloping to the sun, with sleek, gentle cows 
feeding, and narrow fields where tanned and brawny harvest- 
ers were cutting, binding and stooking the quite good wheat, 
11 



162 Lucerne. 

or resting in tired groups, men, women and children gathered 
about the luncheon-baskets and big, blue water-jugs under the 
apple-trees, quite numerously planted here, but, unless this is an 
'' off year," not flourishing well. The apple-trees, as well as the 
numerous pear-trees, look neglected, and I should think neither 
here nor in Germany where we have been, is much care given 
to the cultivation of fruit. We skirt the little lake of Zug, 
exquisitely set in its ring of great mountains, enter on the val- 
ley of the broad, green Reuss, which bounds joyously along 
to join the Rhine after its confluence with the Limmat, form- 
ing the Aare. The Reuss both feeds and empties the Lake of 
Lucerne, or, as it stands on Swiss maps, the Vierwaldstatter 
See, and Lucerne is situated at the point of its discharge. 

Lucerne is a walled city of some 18,000 population, and 
the capital of the canton of the same name. It lies more than 
1400 feet above the sea-level, and beautiful for situation it is 
on this emerald water, wherein most famous Alpine peaks, 
white with snow, look to see themselves reflected not by day 
only, but in the night, under the awful silence of the stars. 
All the world comes here to worship nature in the prescribed 
and fashionable way. The Hotel Schweizerhof, where we have 
rooms looking down the lake, shelters six hundred and fifty 
guests, lodges numbers in private houses, and turns many 
away. Looking over only two recent pages of the register, I 
find names from Melbourne, San Francisco, New York, Mon- 
treal, London, Paris, Russia, Roumania, Egypt, Rome, Naples, 
Madrid, and so on. English and Americans outnumber all 
others. Near at hand on the right rises the bare and jagged 
peak of Pilatus from its foot-bills of fair pastures, shining out 
from dark masses of pines, deeply serrated and gashed with 
frightful chasms ; on the left, the Rigi, ending precipitously 
on the north, but sloping away southward into green pasture 
lands, whereon thousands of cattle find nourishment in the 
short, sweet grass, and still lower into tilled fields and orchards 
of fig, chestnut and almond trees. In front rise, rank above 
rank, countless peaks of the Uri range, each with its signifi- 
cant German name, some in cold, naked grandeur, with lofty 
ravines, with glaciers, and others verdurous to the very tops. 
There is a goodly stretch of the old town wall left on the west 
side, with half a dozen fine towers in perfect preservation. 
At some remote age a glacier tore its way through the rim of 



The Lion of Lucerne. — Chapel to Willia?n Tell. 163 

hills, cutting a deep chasm through what is now the centre of 
the town, leaving precipitous walls of sandstone. In the face 
of one of these is carved the well-known Lion of Lucerne, from 
a model by Thorwaldsen. The majestic lion, twenty-eight feet 
in length, lies dying, transfixed by a broken lance, noble and 
impressive, in his last agony still guarding with nerveless paw 
the Bourbon lily, signifying that his blood is shed not for the 
Swiss fatherland, but for France. The effigy commemorates 
the twenty-six officers and seven hundred and sixty soldiers of 
the Swiss Guard who fell in defence of the Tuileries, August 
loth, 1792. One thinks sadly that this great monument per- 
petuates the memory of mercenaries who fell bravely fighting 
in defence of an alien despot, and would prefer that it kept 
before the eyes of the Swiss the heroic virtues of that earlier 
and better time when their fathers knew so well how to roll 
back from their mountain passes the tides of Burgundian and 
Austrian invasions, and the bare breast of Winkelried harvest- 
ed so many hostile spears that liberty came in by the way he 
made. He too has a fine monument in a village near by, 
showing him in act of falling, struck through with many 
spears. 

We sailed up the full length of the lake, including the south 
arm, called Urner See, or Lake of Uri. On the east bank of 
this lake, not far from its union with the Lake of Lucerne, 
stands a little chapel to William Tell, erected on the site of one 
built by Canton Uri in 1388, on the spot where Tell is said to 
have sprung from Gessler's boat. Once a year, on Friday 
after Ascension Day, mass is said and a sermon preached at 
7 A.M., when the people assemble in gala form in boats gayly 
bedecked. And now come along the cold-blooded critics and 
say, and perhaps prove, that no William Tell ever existed, and 
that all his exploits are the merest fable. This is a pity, for 
it is a noble myth, if myth it be, dignified and worthy of the 
brave people who have believed it for so many years, and long 
will it be before it fades from the popular heart. The deep 
green waters of this narrow lake are closely shut in by mag- 
nificent mountains smiling to their frozen tops with pastoral 
scenes, sweet and tender amid the awful grandeur cast from 
above. 

We made the ascent of Rigi from the pretty town of Vitznau 
on Lake Lucerne by a railway whose engines use the cogged 



164 A Fine View from the Top of the Rigi. 

wheels familiar to Americans on the road up Mount Washing- 
ton. The road-bed is solidly laid in the conglomerate rock, 
the maximum grade is one foot in four, and something over 
an hour is used in reaching the top or kulm, where is a capital 
hotel, four stories high, solidly built of stone, brick and 
cement, a building, both in its handsome exterior and well-fin- 
ished inside, which would do credit to any large town. The 
view from all sides is wonderfully fine, ranks of pinnacled 
Alps, snow-clad, stretching away interminably ; a shining sea 
storm-tossed, delightful valleys fresh with verdure, green lakes 
far below, on whose edges clustering villages lift their red 
roofs with many a spire and tower; a broad, rich, indescribable 
panorama, of which no idea has or can be conveyed to a human 
soul except through the organs of sight. Almost under our 
feet lies bright Lake Lucerne ; near by, an emerald gem, Lake 
Zug, and shining not far off. Lakes Sempach and Egeri, near 
which were fought the two famous battles of Sempach and 
Morgarten. Sentis, Glarus, the Wetterhorn, the Eiger, the 
Jungfrau, and many another famous Alpine peak and pinnacle 
are visible. I cannot speak of them in any fitting terms. 

We look northward right across a most fair valley upon a pro- 
longed mass of mingled earth and rocks, now partly covered 
with vegetation, reaching from the base of Rossberg far out into 
the narrow plain, and think with awe how on the 3d of Sep- 
tember, 1806, this enormous and gloomy mass slid from the 
steep side of the mountain, leaving a vast space bare and yel- 
low where it became detached, and in a mass a mile long, 
1000 feet wide and 100 feet thick, fell on the pretty and thriv- 
ing village of Goldau and buried it and more than seven hun- 
dred villagers forever out of sight, and lies there, darkly, under 
our eyes this sunny day, amid the stagnant pools which have 
formed about it ; the gloomy burial-mound of a whole com- 
munity. I remember when a lad reading a striking account 
of this great calamity written by some able pen, it being the 
unlikeliest notion to me, in my pioneer home on a Western 
prairie, that I should ever visit the scene of it. 

Here at Lucerne are the very birthplace and cradle of Swiss 
liberty and the Swiss nation. The three forest cantons of 
Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden border on the lake. Their 
league for mutual defence against Austria in 1291 was the 
nucleus of the confederacy which gradually extended through 



From Lucerne to Andermatt. 165 

five centuries of various fortune, and now embraces twenty- 
two cantons, constituting the Republic of Switzerland. 

I engaged Bossard, a sturdy Swiss, with his four horses 
to make a carriage journey over the Alps into Italy by the 
St. Gothard Pass. We leave Lucerne regretfully. I did not 
think earth had anything at once so fair and so sublime as 
the scenes outspread on every hand. 

August 2 2. — We take leave^of the excellent Hotel Schweizer- 
hof, where we have met many American acquaintances, at 
7.30 A.M., breakfast on the steamboat which conveys us to 
Brunnen, at the head of the lake, and at once take our hired 
carriage, which drove up yesterday so as to start fresh this 
morning, as to-day's drive is to be long and hard. The car- 
riage is a sort of drag with a landau body, a seat in front for 
two, over which a hood like a buggy-top can be drawn, and in 
front of that still another, holding the driver and Frattini. 
Behind is a strong rack easily taking two big trunks, and 
under it a close box with a tight-fitting door, in which hand- 
bags, extra wraps, etc., are carried. The horses look strong 
and seasoned and are fitted out with red tassels and pleasant- 
jingling bells. Our plan is to make the Pass of St. Gothard 
so far as the Hospice on the highest ridge, then return to 
Hospenthal and make the Furka Pass much beyond, so that 
we must climb up to Andermatt to-day. 

We skirt the east shore of Lake Uri on a splendid road high 
above the lake, built at enormous cost, and guarded at all 
curves by a solid stone parapet and elsewhere by heavy 
stone posts set in the ground about ten feet apart. Consider- 
able distances are blasted out of the solid rock, with several 
tunnels and cuttings. At one point, in a long tunnel through 
a rocky projection, a wide opening has been made toward the 
lake, affording a magnificent view of the noble mountain 
forms which rise sharply from the opposite shore, as well as 
of the deep green lake far below. At ten miles Fluelen is 
reached, 1434 feet above the sea-leveJ. This is the port of Uri 
and the starting-point of the high-road over the St. Gothard. 
Two miles farther is Altdorf, the capital of the canton of Uri, 
pleasantly nestled among the feet of the mountains. This vil- 
lage is the scene of many exploits of Tell, and a big statue of 
plaster stands in the little square on the spot where he is said 
to have stood when he split the apple on his son's head with 



166 Exquisite Pastoral Scenes. 

his arrow. This was erected in 1861. About four hundred 
feet distant from the statue is a fountain with a statue to a 
local dignitary styled Besler. This is believed to stand on 
the site of the lime-tree against which the boy was placed. 
This tree is said to have been standing in 1567. About a 
mile to the right is Burglen, another charmingly located vil- 
lage, where Tell is said to have been born, and we got a 
glimpse of a chapel erected on the site of his house in 1522. 
I am not familiar with the evidence by which it is sought to 
establish that this Swiss hero never lived nor did the deeds 
attributed to him, but it should be of a clear and convincing 
kind. It will hardly answer that certain early chroniclers did 
not mention his name, for that might easily be, since the early 
historians were a queer lot, and scarcely more likely to record 
what did than what did not happen. 

We lunch at Amsteg, where we are 1760 feet above the sea, 
and at Andermatt, where we pass the night, thirty-five miles 
from Brunnen, 4738 feet. All day we have followed up the 
course of the Reuss, a turbulent Alpine stream, foamy and dis- 
colored with the grayish particles of triturated rock it is 
sweeping down from the glacial source of its principal branch 
high among the summits of the St. Gothard Alps. It sweeps 
roaring down, tumbling in white cascades, gliding in rapids, 
boiling in eddies, and fed on either hand by frequent stream- 
lets gliding like silvery serpents down the abrupt crags lining 
its narrow valley. All the way up we climb by the zigzag 
windings of an admirable road kept in perfect order by con- 
stant attention, through scenery on either hand of the grand- 
est and most beautiful description. The gigantic mountains 
which shut in the narrow valley of the Reuss, throughout its 
entire extent, lift their summits above the clouds, crowned 
with everlasting snow or bare and desolate, but their feet 
clothed with the richest verdure, and the eye rests on a suc- 
cession of exquisite pastoral scenes, soft as the Vale of Tempe. 
Nor is the presence of man wanting to vivify the picture. At 
incredible and, so far as the eye can see, inaccessible heights 
stands many a chalet with its little patch of pasture and still 
smaller bit of tilled field clinging with steep slope to the 
mountain-side, or lining the depths of rocky recesses with live- 
liest verdure. 

The weather signs were not favorable when we left Lucerne 



Andermatt. - 167 

in the morning ; Pilatus had donned all his storm insignia, cap, 
collar and sword, the barometer threatened, while on the lake 
in the morning we had rough wind and a heavy rain, which 
moderated and ceased by fits all day, but clouds rested always 
on the highest peaks. Toward evening the rain grew heavier 
and the clouds came deeper down the sides of the mountains, 
and at Devil's Bridge, a little way below Andermatt, where the 
Reuss rushes far below, a torrent of gray foam churned by its 
fall of a hundred feet, the wind swirled down the deep rifts 
of the mountains and up the gorge of the Reuss, bearing swift- 
flying trails and streamers of watery vapor, deepening the 
natural horrors of the spot by fitfully obscuring the " Hell of 
waters," whose deafening roar deadened all other sounds. At 
a point not far below the bridge the road is covered for sev- 
eral rods by a heavy shed of stone to protect it from the ava- 
lanches so frequent there. 

The quaint old village of Andermatt is charmingly situated 
on a plain made from the deposits of the Reuss, where its val- 
ley widens for nearly a mile. It is a good deal of a health re- 
sort, and the Hotel Bellevue, a large, well built and finished 
house, with " dependences" or smaller buildings near by, is 
filled with guests. 

August 23. — Although the weather is threatening, we start 
at 9 A.M. to cross the St. Gothard, and follow from the 
hamlet of Hospenthal at the head of the Urseren-Thal — as 
the broad valley on which Andermatt is situated is called — 
the smaller of the two branches of the Reuss, rising in 
Lake Lucendro, a clear mountain stream, like the moun- 
tain brooks of New England, and haunted by trout, as we 
proved at Andermatt this morning, where we had a mess 
for breakfast and found them excellent, as well as the honey, 
these being two local products much esteemed. We mount- 
ed up by continuous zigzags, the gloom and desolation in- 
creasing, with effect heightened by the lowering sky and 
falling rain ; yet, at the very Pass itself, 6936 feet above the 
sea, and all along the valley leading up to it, is such abun- 
dance of vegetation as to keep herds in pasture, and they are 
driven up from Italy for the summer. At a point not far 
below the Pass was a flock of two hundred and twenty-four 
big, white, handsome sheep, tranquilly resting in the care 
of two swarthy Italians with slouched hats and long, ample 



168 The St. Gothard Road.— Lugano. 

cloaks. At a quarter of a mile south of the highest point is a 
decent hotel, the Hotel du Mont Prosa, where we were glad to 
take shelter from the rain, which now came down furiously. 
We lunched there, and during the p.m. came back to Ander- 
matt in a pouring rain, safely sheltered in our landau, and 
took rooms at the Bellevue for the night, proposing to make 
the Furka Pass next day. The night was cold and dreary, 
with heavy rain, changing to snow before morning, when the 
mountains and valleys were covered in a deep mantle of it, 
and more still falling. We decided to give up the Furka Pass 
and went down to Goschenen, where we took the 11.45 ^^^^ 
train on the St. Gothard road for Lugano. At Goschenen this 
wonderful road enters the tunnel, nine and one-quarter miles 
long, through the St. Gothard Mountain. We occupied 
twenty-three minutes in the passage, and came out on the 
Italian side in the warmth'of summer. Two hours before, we 
left people shovelling snow, to find others basking under a hot 
sun, harvesting hay. We wind down to the level of Lake 
Lugano by easy, zigzag gradients with many tunnels, follow- 
ing the swift and clear Ticino, and leaving the beautiful valley 
of it at Bellinzona, are soon at the delightfully situated Hotel 
du Pare in Lugano, with charming views from our rooms upon 
the lake of that name. 

This is the largest town of the Italian Swiss canton of Ticino, 
with 6000 population, and a delightful spot it is. Our hotel was 
once the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angioli, prosperous 
and fatly endowed, I ween, if one may judge from the big, com- 
fortable rooms and high-arched corridors, ample cloisters and 
fair refectory, now changed into the good restaurant, where I 
am sure the wines are not better now than the bef rocked cellarer 
could draw in the vaulted crypts below. The church of the old 
convent immediately adjoins the hotel, and is made famous by 
the frescoes of Bernardino Luini on its walls. The great space 
of the rood-screen is wholly covered with his picture of " The 
Crucifixion ;" on the walls of a side-aisle is a " Last Supper," 
and in a chapel a "Madonna," of which I have a fine engrav- 
ing at home and always greatly admired. These masterpieces 
were painted on the plaster of the walls early in the sixteenth 
century, and have lost much of their freshness by the damp- 
ness, and to save them, in the case of all except " The Crucifix- 
ion," the whole portion of the plaster containing them has been 



St res a. 1G9 

ingeniously cut out, secured upon some kind of substantial 
backing, framed, and replaced against the walls, but some 
inches removed from them. 

August 26. — Went by a small steamboat down Lake Lugano 
to Ponte Tresa, thence crossed by rail to Luino on Lake Mag- 
giore. We underwent the Italian Custom-House at Ponte Tresa, 
where I was compelled to pay one franc for each five ounces of 
a half box of cigars I had in a hand-bag. This made me feel 
quite at home, especially as the low-browed, black-muzzled 
bandits who ploughed through our luggage had manners quite 
like the tobacco-squirting Texans who rifled our luggage, on 
behalf of Uncle Sam, at El Paso, to levy toll on a few Mexican 
curiosities we had ventured to bring home from our tour in 
Mexico. 

At Luino, where Garibaldi won a battle against the Aus- 
trians and is honored with a striking statue in the square 
fronting the lake, took steamboat down Lake Maggiore to 
Stresa, and passed the night at the commodious Hotel des 
lies Borromees, fronting the lake at its finest part and in the 
midst of beautiful grounds. Most charming is the view from 
the balcony on which our rooms open, and it is not easy 
to imagine a more beautiful scene than the fair lake bor- 
dered by a great variety of wooded and pinnacled mountains 
and beset with shining villages. We would gladly remain 
here a week, but have not yet got through with the Alps. 
The fair Borromean Islands lie just off Stresa — Isola Madre, 
Isola dei Pescatori and Isola Bella — on the last of which 
one of the old and famous Borromeo family erected a chateau 
in the latter part of the seventeenth century and laid out 
fantastic grounds. 

Frattini engaged Jacob Heininger with his five horses to 
carry us over the Simplon. Jacob produced a testimonial 
from an eminent New York physician beginning " My Dear 
Heininger," and ending with an invitation to visit him in New 
York as his friend, both he and his wife signing it. As it 
stated Jacob had driven the worthy couple for a month with 
great acceptance, I instructed Frattini to secure him at once, 
and at 8.30 a.m., the 27th of August, we set forth in great 
style, the plumes waving from each horse's head, the bells 
jingling, and the entire pe rsonncl oi the hotel bowing and scrap- 
ing. Bossard, who drove us over the St. Gothard Pass, had 



170 Our Eccentric Coachman. 

an idiotic way of incessantly cracking his whip to urge on his 
horses, they having become entirely indifferent to it, but 
Jacob uses the most extraordinary means to that end ever 
conceived of. Indeed, I cannot help thinking the doctor 
found it a phenomenon so interesting from a medical point 
of view, that he was led to value Jacob beyond his capability 
as a mere whip. His sole note of warning, threatening or en- 
couragement to his horses, consists in that peculiar spasmodic 
eructation to which the school-boy is liable after his first cigar ; 
that convulsive prelude to the final catastrophe uttered from 
the uncontrollable throat of the sensitive voyager leaning over 
the side of an ocean steamer in rough weather. So habitual 
is the use of this remarkable sound with Jacob, that whenever 
he has finished any sentence of the remarks he frequently in- 
dulges himself in, this sound invariably follows, as if, sicken- 
ing of the ordinary forms of speech, he were about to throw 
up all his feelings at once. But we go merrily on with Jacob 
up the fertile valley of the Tosa, a swift and considerable 
stream which helps to feed Lake Maggiore, and note with 
pleasure the careful cultivation of a very considerable variety 
of crops, including many small patches of Indian corn. I re- 
marked that I was amazed to see so much maize grown here, 
whereupon the younger members of my party very properly 
declared they must abandon me at the next attempt of this 
sort. But almost anything goes among these sombre Alps, 
and I have several times caused hilarity in Frattini by the 
production of exceedingly ancient stories which, having served 
their full time, have long been discharged from service. But 
the wily Italian well knows when he is expected to laugh, 
and I dare say that, could I detect it, I should find he has his 
revenge in the items of the weekly account he renders. 
Women, young and old, are at work out of doors, more 
numerous than men, doing the heaviest kinds of work, mowing, 
gathering the short cut grass into long, tapering baskets, in 
which they carry, strapped to their shoulders, incredible loads 
of the various crops, no other sort of conveyance being in use. 
We saw many cases of goitre in different stages of advance 
among these poor peasants, caused by their hard life and poor 
and insufficient food. Frattini says that many among them 
make a bread out of chestnuts to last a whole year, pounding 
up and soaking it into a kind of porridge. 



Napoleons Great Road. 171 

We lunch on brook trout at the Hotel de la Ville et Poste 
in the quaint village of Domo d'Ossola, driving into a great 
court-yard round which the yellow quadrangular buildings 
rise four stories high, witli railed balconies running along each 
story. Two hours before, at eleven o'clock, at Pallanzeno, 
Jacob had halted to give his horses a draught of a thickish 
meal-porridge, followed by three loaves of the black, hard 
bread of the country, cut into slices ; a feed, in the midst of a 
hard drive, to throw George, our Scotch coachman, into a 
sweat only to hear of it. We passed extensive quarries of 
rose-tinted granite at Ornavasso, and near it are the still more 
extensive and old marble quarries from which the Cathedral 
of Milan is built. 

So far as Domo d'Ossola we have been accompanied by a 
solidly built railway which, if all things favor, is to be carried 
over and through the Simplon. The telegraph-wire runs from 
Stresa atop of solid granite pillars. Here the ascent seriously 
begins, the Tosa brawls more vociferously down its narrowing 
valley, and we climb slowl}'' up on the road built by Napoleon 
I. on the highway from Milan to Paris. This road as well as 
that over the St. Gothard and all roads we have ridden over 
in Europe so far, are kept in perfect order by constant repairs, 
are laid out by competent engineers and built solidly in 
broken stone. We know little about good roads in America 
in comparison. We still have luxuriant vegetation in favored 
spots and chestnut, fig and mulberry trees and patches of corn, 
with lofty mountains frowning from above. At several points 
we noticed a stout single wire stretching from the roadside 
across the deep bed of the Tosa and fastened to a point on 
the opposite cliff, not less than a thousand feet high, on which 
woodmen on the narrow shelf, almost out of sight, fastened 
little bundles of firewood cut from the slender pines on the 
steep slopes. These came sliding down slowly at first, then 
with increasing velocity, until they landed with a crash beside 
the road. 

We passed the night comfortably at the Hotel Posta in the 
little hamlet Iselle, lulled to rest by the Tosa chafing in its 
rocky channel. There is an Italian customs-station here, 
where all coming from Switzerland have strict examination^ 
and a score of lusty fellows are kept patrolling the mountain- 
paths night and day on the lookout for smugglers, who never- 



173 The Ravine of Gondo. 

theless carry on a brisk trade, taking an occasional scrimmage 
with the revenue officers, who are backed by a small force of 
gendarmes and a lock-up close at hand. We calmly saw the 
down-coming diligence overhauled, for we, leaving Italy, were 
not liable to examination. The diligence is a lumbering 
coach-body with a glass window-front called the coupe. This 
is fully shut off by a partition from the main part called the 
interieur, and perched up behind is a covered seat for two 
called the banquette, making eight seats in all for passengers, 
the coupe holding two. They are drawn by four horses 
changed often, and are dreary conveyances, the only desirable 
part being the banquette. 

We set out in good case next morning at 8.30, in weather 
which fully repaid the pains we had taken to make sure of a 
good day for one of the great Alpine passes. Yesterday could 
not be complained of, but to-day there is not a speck visible 
anywhere in the blue sky, the atmosphere to the very moun- 
tain-tips is clear as crystal and the sweet air charged with 
life. Great peace and a high serenity fill these august upper 

spaces as 

" Tenderly the haughty day 
Fills his blue urn with fire." 

At two miles on the ascending road we pass a granite column 
on which is cut the word " Italia," marking the boundary be- 
tween Italy and Switzerland, and soon reach the hamlet of 
Gondo, where we pass the Swiss Custom-House without exam- 
ination, and are at once in the midst of the most majestic 
scenery conceivable. On both sides of the wild roadway tower 
bold cliffs 2000 feet, far below in a sunless gorge hoarsely 
roars the stream shrunken by distance to a line of swift-darting 
foam, while to the left opens the awful Ravine of Gondo, re- 
vealing the Bodmer Glacier glistening icily above. In charm- 
ing contrast, on midway terraces and slopes, wherever vegeta- 
tion can have got any footing, are bits of green pasture, and 
even patches of mowing land with grass so sweet and nutri- 
tious that Jacob says it is better than corn. It is this remark- 
able union of the pastoral with the savage and desolate that 
constitutes the inexpressible beauty of these mountains. Sleek 
cattle feed in sober security beside the track of the avalanche, 
and mowers whet their scythes on slopes overhung by ever- 
lasting snows. From the Italian lakes we saw the snowy top 



Simplon. — The Hospice. 173 

of the Fletschhorn rising nearly 13,000 feet, and now it towers 
above us close at hand. 

We dine capitally at Simplon, and after resting the horses 
for two hours, climb up past the old Hospice at the base of the 
Schonhorn, rising snow-capped, and are at the highest point on 
the Simplon Pass, 6595 feet, 500 feet less than the correspond- 
ing point on the St. Gothard. Here is a broad, open valley 
of good pasture land, and all about and far as the eye can see, 
snowy peaks, including the towering cone of the Wetterhorn, 
on the right the Rossboden Glacier with its hilly moraine, and 
many a shining top of the long Bernese range. We called at 
the Hospice, a large solid stone building, were shown by a 
polite brother the comfortable rooms where travellers may 
lodge, the refectory, a long, high hall, where a table was spread 
with a coarse but clean linen cover, had a bottle of sourish 
white wine produced in the high valleys near by, peeped into 
the pretty chapel where services of song were going on by 
three of the brothers with pleasant voices and not a listener 
in sight, dropped into the iron-bound chest the sum which 
elsewhere comes to one in the form of a bill of charges, patted 
a handsome St. Bernard puppy and began the steep descent. 
On the way up we gathered by the roadside pink crocuses, 
blue gentians, Alpine roses, until a height was reached where 
only the last is found. All along on either side of the pass 
we saw little cascades falling as from the clouds out of their 
snowy sources, some gleaming deep within the narrow channels 
they have been for unknown ages chamfering in the solid face 
of the rock, others glancing in wider fall from shelf to shelf, 
like an endless web of unfolding lace. Those French engineers 
who carried this road up from the valley of "the "arrowy 
Rhone," gleaming far down below us in the warm rays of the 
declining sun, surely knew their trade well, and the granite 
masonry of bridge and buttress and parapet stands firm 
and shapely. We got a view at one point of Brieg, our desti- 
nation, 5000 feet below, with the green bit of the widened 
Rhone valley on which it stands showing in such miniature as 
would be produced by looking at it through an inverted tele- 
scope. We descend briskly, zigzagging down sharp gradients, 
one wheel sliding on a broad wooden shoe which Jacob has 
attached, not to be removed until we pull up in front of the 
Couronnes et Poste, our hotel for the night. The scenery 



174 The Village of Brieg. — A Funeral Procession. 

on the way down is fully as striking as on the ascent. The 
Alpine snow-peaks gradually disappear for the most part, but 
the Rauthorn with its glacier and the shapely Fletschhorn are 
still shining above us ; we wind under lesser but still tremen- 
dous mountains where avalanches are nursed, around craggy 
points where the head grows dizzy with looking down pre- 
cipitous gorges a thousand feet deep, and everywhere that 
slope or terrace or ledge will permit tree to stand or grass to 
grow are signs' of human existence and sylvan life. 

After a comfortable night in pleasant rooms looking out on 
a little garden where a meek fountain plays softly, and just 
beyond a clear mountain stream hastens down an artificial 
channel of stone to mingle with the Rhone, we strolled about 
the little village of Brieg, remarkable for nothing but its fair 
situation among the mountains, and cgime upon a little open 
square among the old stone houses, w'here a high-rounded 
coffin stood on trestles in the central spaee, with many wreaths 
of evergreens and flowers on it ; a table covered with a cloth 
on which stood four lighted candles flaring in the warm sun- 
light, and another table on which stood a bowl of holy water. 
Two female watchers in white robes and cowls stood near, and 
now and then some one would advance from the little group 
of people in their best clothes standing about, and dipping a 
leafy twig in the bowl, sprinkle the coffin with drops of water. 
Later from our balcony we saw a long procession moving by 
in solemn silence, the bier borne on the shoulders ^of six men, 
and a great number of priests in white surplices carrying 
among them a huge cross with an image of the Saviour on it. 
Behind came a lengthy train of well-dressed people all on foot, 
and the whole filed down a long avenue of Lombardy poplars to 
cross the Rhone to the church on the other side. I wondered 
how so many could be got together on any occasion whatever 
in this small community, for the cortege was nearly a third of a 
mile long, and was informed it was to celebrate the funeral of 
an estimable and well-beloved lady who had done many kind 
deeds here. Frattini said the shops were mostly closed and, 
the funeral over, the day would be kept as a holiday and most 
of the people indulge in a drunken debauch. I hope not, but 
am not likely to know, for at i p.m. we took train for Mar- 
tigny, where we arrived at 4 p.m., having made the average 
run on the Swiss roads of forty-seven miles in three hours. 



Mont Blanc. 175 

From Briegwe followed the Rhone down its pleasant moun- 
tain valley. It has its source in the Glacier du Rhone, some 
thirty miles above Brieg, and as it brings down in its swift 
current a great quantity of the powdery detritus into which 
the glacier grinds the rocks in its irresistible course, its color, 
like all glacial water, is ashen gray. It flows swiftly and 
deposits all along its course the earthy matter with which it 
is charged, forming new land, which the enterprising native 
of the valley enters upon at the earliest possible moment. We 
saw picturesque ruins at Sierre and Sion. 

We lodged well at the Hotel Clerc in Martigny, and next 
morning took a low carriage hung like a Victoria, with two 
seats facing each other and another for the driver, drawn 
by two horses, to cross the Tete Noire on the way to Cha- 
monix. Frattini followed in a heavier wagon with our lug- 
gage. Until within three or four years only light carriages 
drawn by one horse and carrying two persons could be used 
on this difficult road, now much improved. At first we fol- 
low the great St. Bernard road through Martigny-Bourg, 
Drance Bridge, La Croix ; then, turning to the right, wind up 
slopes rich with meadows, orchards and vines, to the Col dela 
Forclaz, three and one half hours from our starting-point and 
nearly 5000 feet above the sea. All along the backward view 
of the Rhone valley and Martigny with its old castle has 
been increasingly fine, and now we enter the forest of dark firs 
at the base of the Tete Noire, the slender waters of the Trient 
murmuring nearly 2000 feet below. 

We dine quite well at the Hotel de la Tete Noire, and after 
resting the horses two hours, proceed through scenes wilder 
and fully as impressive as any we have met. We descend by 
a road of dangerous steepness to the gloomy valley of the Eau 
Noire, and pass from Switzerland into Savoy, since i860 belong- 
ing to France. At Col des Montets, 4740 feet above the sea, the 
Mont Blanc chain comes into view, and we descend rapidly 
into the valley of Chamonix by a series of bold loops and 
gradients, as many as five of which are in sight at once. Be- 
fore this, Frattini, pointing to a dome-shaped cloud far down 
the valley which seemed to rest on the dimly seen tops of the 
great mountains at the entrance, had exclaimed, " Mont 
Blanc," and I had respectfully taken off my hat to this mighty 
monarch of European mountains, although beholding his ma- 



176 The Aiguilles. — Chamonix. 

jesty dimly and more by faith than sight. But on our immediate 
right, as the day is warm and clear, with not a stain on the 
sky, rise in their terrible majesty, stark and sharp, piercing 
the very heavens to the height of more than 10,000 feet, 
several of those granite peaks called the Aiguilles, or needles, 
each having its own name. We rode close by the base of the 
majestic one called Buet, and I have never been so impressed 
by a mountain form before. Soon, however, we come into full 
view of the great Mont Blanc range with its glistening domes 
and pinnacles, huge buttresses and many glaciers slanting 
down to the valley. We pass that of Tour, in which the Arve 
has its rise, next the larger one of d'Argentiere, then the 
famous Mer de Glace, from which the Arveyron issues, soon 
to unite with the Arve, forming a considerable river, which 
rushes down the valley, on its journey to join the distant 
Rhone, with a mad velocity not often seen, and are soon most 
comfortably established in the Hotel Imperial at Chamonix, 
in rooms with a balcony looking directly on the mountains in 
front, and so near that it seems easy to stroll to the summit ; 
so deceptive is the distance in the sunset light. 

The ride to day has been long, hard and hot. After dinner 
we gaze from our balcony upon the heights of eternal snow 
gleaming spectrally under the summer stars. Down the valley 
of the Arve the crescent moon is glimmering through a soft 
haze, and just above the snow, in the gorge between the domes 
of Mont Blanc and du Gouter, burns with sparkling lustre 
the planet Jupiter, soon to be eclipsed by the Dome du Gouter 
and reappear again on the side of the valley. 

The village of Chamonix is a point where tourists congre- 
gate, and is made up of hotels, the houses of the associated 
guides, shops and a few villagers besides. The valley of the 
same name, watered by the Arve, is some twelve miles long, 
about one-half mile wide, fertile, and lies 3400 feet above the 
sea. I have before me one of those little books of local infor- 
mation which I look for in places of interest, because I find 
them valuable, being usually written by some careful and often 
scholarly man in love with his subject and knowing the facts. 
This one, which I have had in hand for parts of two days, 
being pretty well confined to my rooms from the effect of the 
heat and fatigue of our hard ride from Martigny, is written 
by the pastor of a church at Vevay, and gives what may be 



The Mont Blanc Range. 177 

styled the history and literature associated with Mont Blanc 
and the region hereabout. I might as well say that I am dis- 
appointed in Mont Blanc. In my ignorance I had expected 
to find an individual mountain of that name towering heaven- 
ward after the manner of great Popocatapetl from the plain of 
Mexico. Instead, I find Mont Blanc to be the head or nucleus 
of a mountain range bearing its name, over thirty miles long, 
and immediately surrounded by peaks and domes not greatly 
inferior to itself in height. These all rise from the back- 
bone of the range, itself nearly 8000 feet high, so that the dif- 
ference in altitude of the various peaks is not apparently 
great, seen from the base where we are. Of course, seen from 
a great elevation or at a distance, this difference will be more 
apparent ; still the actual difference does not much exceed 1000 
feet between the dome of Mont Blanc and several of its neigh- 
bors, the gigantic pinnacle of Aiguille Verte rising 13,500 feet, 
du Dru 12,500 feet. Dome du Gouter 14,200 feet, with many 
others not much inferior, while the height of the summit of 
the dome of Mont Blanc itself is 15,730 feet. The whole 
scene, however, is one of the highest sublimity and magnifi- 
cence. Wonderful it is to see the frozen rivers of the glaciers 
running down between cultivated fields and green pastures, 
their vast masses of a hundred feet in thickness firm and un- 
yielding in the hot summer sun. As is well known, the entire 
mass of billowy ice composing these glaciers moves downward 
at a well-ascertained rate, slower or faster during periods of 
years, and here averaging about five inches per day. They 
grind their way down the enormous gorges with irresistible 
power, crushing the rocks at the sides and bottom to the finest 
powder, and at the lower end, where they gradually yield to 
the solar heat, depositing the debris in a rounded heap. 

Not being enough recovered to do any walking, I drove with 
my family to the foot of the great glacier of the Bossons, and 
waited in the shade of a neat white cottage with deep, project- 
ing eaves and green balconies filled with flowers until they 
should have visited it. A pretty little girl of eight years came 
quietly out, seated herself on a bench beside the door, took 
from a little pocket her various colored yarns, carefully selected 
the shades needed, and patiently for a long time wrought quite 
natural flowers on a small square canvas, looking furtively out 
at me from under her straw hat from time to time, with large, 
12 



178 The Famous Mountain Guide, Francois Devouasoud. 

soft eyes, and when I put a franc into her little brown hand, 
thanking me in a low, sweet voice, with modest blush. I 
waited three hours, for the young people, after climbing up 
to the little house of rest beside the glacier, took it into their 
heads to cross it, and did so, putting on woollen socks over 
their shoes and being helped over the crevasses and up slip- 
pery steps by two guides, Frattini following as best he could. 

At my invitation, the famous mountain guide Frangois 
Devouasoud, called on me in our rooms, and as he speaks Eng- 
lish quite well, I had an interesting talk of an hour with him. 
He is fifty-eight years old, and has followed his trade of guide 
.for forty years, having scaled all the mountain-peaks of im- 
portance in Switzerland and many elsewhere, notably the 
ihighest of the Caucasus, Mount Elbru, 18,500 feet. He has 
imade the ascent of Mont Blanc twenty-seven times, and from 
our balcony pointed out the path pursued from the Grand 
Mulcts across the Glacier Bossons by the Petit Plateau, the 
Grand Plateau, the Dome du Gouter and the Bosses du 
Dromadaire ; or, according to the state of the weather, by 
the Corridor, the Mur de la Cote and the Petits Mulcts, 
to the summit. All this route to the very top lay so plain 
and palpable on the vast snowy flanks of the range in 
the bright, clear afternoon that it seemed one might put on 
his rubbers and stroll up and back before supper ; yet 
we were obliged yesterday to look through a powerful 
telescope to distinguish a party of six who were making 
the ascent, forming a string of black, spider-like specks con- 
nected by a filmy rope, as they toiled up a background of 
dazzling snow. The plan is to go up to the Grand Mulcts — 
10,000 feet — the afternoon before, sleep at the comfortable 
station there, and a little after midnight cross the Glacier 
Bossons by the light of a lantern, attain the summit about 
8 a.m., and descend to Chamonix the same day. Francois stated 
that with careful guides the ascent is quite safe, almost the 
only danger being from a sudden storm coming on when near 
the top, and that the difficulties are not nearly so great as in 
the ascent of several of the Aiguilles or abrupt granite peaks 
of the range. 

A very interesting man is Frangois, sincere, frank, brave, as 
his strong, quiet features show, and with the natural dignity, 
politeness and modesty of a gentleman. He is strongly built, 



Jacques Balinat. 179 

with somewhat slouchy movements, like a farmer having a 
holiday, but with a quick, resolute look at times, as if obliged 
often to decide and act promptly. He said he himself had 
never experienced any alarming or very unpleasant symptoms 
at any height he had attained, but many whom he had con- 
ducted did so. He suffers somewhat from rheumatism, "for," 
said he, " weather which breaks granite is felt in the bones," 
and goes among the mountains less and less, and after two or 
three years more will cease altogether and do no more than 
tend his little farm and cattle a mile from the village, where 
he lives comfortably in a snug house and keeps with pride 
many presents, commendations and grateful tokens from 
people he has guided among these perilous heights for nearly 
half a century. He told in the simplest, heartiest way of his 
trip to Paris this summer, what wonders are in the Exposition, 
and, what surprised and amused me, that he would not ven- 
ture to go up the Eiffel Tower, " because," he said, '' you are 
among a lot of other people, and if anything happens to the 
lift there is nothing you can take hold of with your hands to 
save yourself." Here is a man who has climbed the precipi- 
tous crag of d'Aiguille Verte, seeking hold for hand and foot 
in its perpendicular wall, with 5000 dizzy feet of precipice ^ 
below, who would not trust himself to ride in an elevator with 
a party of easy citizens. He has two younger brothers who 
are also famous as guides. 

I learn from my little book that Mont Blanc was first 
climbed by Jacques Balmat in 1786, who after several trials 
succeeded, tempted by the inducements offered by the natural- 
ist de Saussure, who was anxious to find a way up for himself 
that he might make some observations and experiments there. 
He did so the following year guided by Balmat, and there is 
in the little square in Chamonix a spirited monument repre- 
senting him pointing the way up the glittering heights to his 
rapt companion. Since that time there have been more than 
one thousand ascents, of which I note sixty-four were by 
women, and now during the fine weather parties go up almost 
daily. 

Chamonix is well organized for robbing tourists, some fif- 
teen thousand of whom come here annually. The guides and 
muleteers are fully organized, with an exorbitant tariff of 
rates, and as no one can come or leave except by diligence or 



180 Geneva. 

private conveyance, the coachmen have it all their own way, 
and a vile way it is. 

Frattini engaged a conveyance to Geneva, but early on the 
morning we were lo leave saw the driver of it trotting shame- 
lessly out of town with a full carriage. Another was hired, 
who put on part of the luggage and then refused in the most 
nonchalant way to put on any more, and was driven off with 
ignominy by the now frantic Frattini, who, storming the town, 
soon returned in triumph, seated on the box beside an excel- 
lent Jehu, who, obliged to return to Geneva this morning, 
pulled up his four horses with a flourish, in the prospect of an 
unexpected fare. So at 9 o'clock, on the morning,of the 3d of 
September, we set out in fine style for Geneva, distant forty- 
three miles. Our road followed the milky Arve down its 
swift current through the smiling valley of Chamonix, from 
which opens a wild ravine with fine backward views of the 
Mont Blanc range, which seems to grow in magnitude the 
farther we get from it. At the hamlet of Magland a huge 
spring, like the one we visited at San Philipe, near the Rio 
Grande in Texas, gushes out from under a great cliff by the 
roadside in enormous volume. 

We lunch, not very well, at Bonneville, reaching it over a 
broad, fertile meadow-land, and note the Castle of Chatillon 
perched high up on a crag, seeming inaccessible. Bonneville 
is in the midst of a fertile and highly cultivated plain with 
grand mountains all about, of which the Pointe d'Andey and 
Mole rise 6000 feet. Two miles from Geneva we cross the 
French frontier, with only the formality of a question from 
the Swiss customs-officer by the roadside, and soon through a 
broad, shady avenue lined on either hand with handsome 
country-seats in spacious and charming grounds, enter on 
t±ie steep streets of the old city of Geneva, and crossing the 
blue Rhone, now cleared of all impurities by its long rest in 
the tranquil lake, just where it issues from it, are soon in- 
stalled, with the abundant care, civility and politeness charac- 
terizing the Swiss hotels, in excellent quarters in the Hotel 
Beaurivage, fronting the lake. 

- Geneva is the largest of the Swiss cities, with a population of 
about 70,000. It lies pleasantly at the lower end of Lake 
Leman, sloping down the gradual southern shore in the form of 
a crescent, and divided by the Rhone into halves connected 



Geneva's Watch-making Industry. 181 

by eight good bridges. It is the capital of the canton of 
Geneva, has nothing remarkable in its architecture, but has a 
prosperous, busy look and an endless number of little shops 
where all sorts of jewelry and ornamental goods are displayed 
in endless variety. It thrives on foreigners, selling them es- 
pecially a prodigious number of watches, which are made here 
and in all the little villages among the hills. The parts of a 
watch so made are put together here by leading firms, and 
as fashion has for a long time favored these watches, pretty 
much everybody who comes here buys. There is a school 
here where watch-making is taught, and this single industry 
supports and enriches a vast number of people. 

The legions of victorious Rome marching northward to 
conquer the barbarous tribes inhabiting these valleys found 
a town in existence here one hundred years before the Chris- 
tian era and named it Genava, and for two thousand years, 
with stormy and varying fortunes, it has cut something of a 
figure in the world. Here lived and wrought and died in 1564 
grim John Calvin, the artificer of the theological scheme known 
as Calvinism, which I believe has cast a darker shadow over 
more human souls during the last four hundred years than any 
system contrived by man since Christ was born upon the earth. 
With the pitiless logic of a subtle brain and an icy heart, he 
dared to aim at knowing the divine counsels, to formulate the 
methods of the Almighty, to limit His mercy, direct His ven- 
geance, and forecast with the awful inevitableness of fate the 
eternal doom of the whole human race. Our pious New Eng- 
land forefathers strove with some success to accept his conclu- 
sions and shape their lives by his dogmas ; their descendants 
have struggled less successfully to the same end, have grown 
careless and faithless, until now who of them can, or would if he 
could, believe in the dark predestination taught by this stern 
Genevan ascetic ? He came here a Protestant seeking refuge 
from persecution because he doubted^ and getting place and 
power, burned at the stake Michael Servetus, the learned Span- 
ish physician fleeing from persecution, because he doubted. 
But Michael's doubts were not John's doubts, and could only be 
resolved and purged by the element of fire. Sweet, pure and 
loving Teacher of Nazareth, how could such fiery fruit come 
from the tender seeds of charity and peace and joy which Thou 
didst sow and water with Thy cherishing blood ? " Surely an 



183 The House of John Calvin. — A Vain Search for his Grave. 

enemy hath done this," and the fagot and the axe are the tares 
of wickedness he sowed. 

We set out to find the house in which Calvin lived, and 
learned, after we had started, that our driver knew nothing 
about it, and several citizens applied to by Frattini in a loud 
voice, from his seat on the box, professed themselves unable 
to reveal the secret ; and when, at my suggestion, he addressed 
the question to a troop of bright boys just coming from school 
with satchels full of books, they seemed, by their indecorous 
hilarity and outcries, to think he was chaffing them. But after 
many hesitations and windings we came to a street named 
Calvin, and found a broad, substantial stone house which a 
melancholy butcher leaning out of a low door hard by averred 
to be that of Calvin, an assurance backed up by a little puck- 
ered-up old lady in a great white cap. I looked into the 
dusty court where were no signs of life save a cat playing with 
a mouse in the hot glare of the afternoon sun. We drove to the 
cemetery of Plainpalais to visit his grave, which the local 
guide-book, by J. E. Muddock, F.R.G. S. — whatever that may 
be — insists is in that spot ; but the confident female in charge 
of the entrance assured us that no John Calvin is buried here. 
Relating this to a gentleman residing in the city, he informed me 
that the place of his burial is not known. So utterly are the 
traces of him who was so great and powerful obliterated ! And 
as if in mockery of the dyspeptic bigot who interdicted the 
stage and all other forms of amusement, there rises in the 
fairest part of the city almost the handsomest theatre, outside 
and in, I have ever seen, costing nearly a million dollars ! 

We visited the Cathedral, which has little of interest, and 
the Greek church with its gilded domes and handsome sandal- 
wood doors, which, after thirty years, still emit a faint odor ; 
also the well-arranged public library of one hundred thousand 
volumes and many interesting early manuscripts. We drove 
to the Villa Diodati, occupied by Byron for some time, and 
looked upon the scenes which fed his high thoughts and cooled 
his wild pulses — scenes he celebrated in verse as beautiful al- 
most as our language can show. Also we drove to Ferney, on 
the opposite side of the lake, to the chateau built and occu- 
pied by Voltaire, where we walked in the long, close-shaded 
alley of dwarf beeches he planted, his favorite walk, where he 
barbed those arrows of scornful raillery which stung despots 



Miis/e Ariatia. 183 

on their thrones and pierced through and through the drag- 
ons of superstition and mocked at holy things with repre- 
hensible sneer. He had charming grounds here and lovely- 
views. Many interesting relics of him are shown in some 
rooms of the chateau, now owned by a Parisian gentleman 
who married the daughter of the purchaser of the estate from 
Voltaire. Among these are portraits of the Great Frederick 
and Catherine II. of Russia, presented to him by themselves. 
He built a chapel near his house, as the inscription on it 
shows, and a number of manufactories, and was a sort of 
benefactor to the working people here gathered about him. 

On the way here we visited the Musee Ariana, a collection 
of works of art open to the public without charge by the kind- 
ness of its owner, M. Gustavus Revilliod, one of those gener- 
ous souls, not uncommon as we have found, who take pleasure 
in sharing the satisfaction they find in beautiful treasures of 
art with those less fortunate. This gentleman has built, in 
a spot commanding a charming view of the lake, a costly build- 
ing of cream-colored stone, solid and beautiful, and in magnifi- 
cent rooms within it are, among the many treasures, an endless 
number of exquisite specimens of the pottery of all countries 
and times, handsomely arranged for viewing, and labelled so 
as to show full particulars about them all. We saw the kindly 
old man walking slowly about, his benevolent-looking wife on 
his arm, enjoying seeing others enjoy the good things he had 
set forth for their happiness. Long may they both live, tran- 
quilly happy in their noble disinterestedness ! 

There stands near the lake in Geneva an imposing monument, 
66 feet high, to Duke Charles II. of Brunswick, who died here 
in 1873, leaving his property, some twenty million francs, to the 
city. It must have cost a great deal of money, for it is sump- 
tuous in costly statues and carving, but is not fully pleasing. 

September 9. — Took a steamboat to the upper end of the 
lake. It stretches away forty-five miles in length, with an 
average width of eight miles, and its shores, in th& lazy tran- 
quillity of a warm summer morning, recede hazily toward the 
lower mountains of the Savoy Alps on the right and the 
dusky ranges of the Jura on the left. Half way up the scenery 
begins to grow bolder. The Jura vanishes by degrees, but 
on the southern shore great Alpine spurs come boldly up to 
the lake one after another and cluster about the eastern end, 



184 The Castle of Chillon. — Bonnivard's Dungeon. 

where the Rhone has worn its impetuous entrance and deposited 
a broad alluvial tract of glacier-worn sediment. The shores 
are studded with costly villas and numerous villages, partly 
gray with age and partly span new, in curious contrast, 
ancient towers rising beside factory chimneys and venerable 
castles on neighborly terms with flaring new hotels. Most 
charming is the situation of Clarens, sheltered from harsh 
winds by the closely overhanging and picturesque mountains. 
Byron, who paints external nature with literal fidelity and 
poetic feeling, has described it as nearly as words can in the 
third canto of " Childe Harold." 

We left the boat at Chillon, quite near the upper end of the 
lake, to visit the castle of that name. Byron has done a great 
deal for it, for it is not so formidable a structure as one expects 
to find, and Bonnivard's dungeon, a long hall supported by a 
range of great stone pillars in the centre, is not greatly worse 
than the rooms shown as the private apartments of the Dukes 
and Duchesses of Savoy, when they resided here. Bonnivard 
was imprisoned here for six years because he took sides with 
the Genevans in their contests with the Duke of Savoy, lived a 
long time after his discharge, and died respected in 1536, at a 
good old age. The most interesting room in the castle, which 
rises picturesquely from the lake, as much like a chateau as a 
stronghold, is the great kitchen with its well-preserved oaken 
ceiling and its huge chimney and fireplace, where an ox could 
easily be roasted entire. This would indicate good cheer, but 
I suppose not many cutlets found their way down into the 
long, high vaulted dungeon lighted by narrow slits in the 
wall, so high up that no peep could be had of the blue water 
and glorious mountains opposite, to-day half veiled in a warm, 
grayish mist. There is a ring in one of the pillars which looks 
as if it might be ten years old ; and the pillar called Bonnivard's 
is literally carved into names. Among them is Byron's, the 
letters of which are worn greatly, as if by the touch of the 
fingers of his pilgrim admirers. Eugene Sue, George Sand 
and Victor Hugo have also taken the trouble to cut their 
names among the thousands on these pillars, which are said to 
date back to about 800. The castle was improved and fortified 
in the thirteenth century by Count Peter of Savoy, and now 
stands pretty much as he left it, having been used as an arsenal 
for the last one hundred years. 



Church of St. Martin. 185 

Returning, we left our carriage at Chillon and took elec- 
tric tramway, passing through an almost continuous line of 
villages, including Clarens, with modern houses along the 
lake and large, handsome hotels, where many people come to 
escape the heat of summer, for the " grape cure," so called, in 
autumn, and to be protected in the winter iroxn ih& Ifisc, or 
cold, moist north wind. We took rooms for the night in 
the Grand Hotel at Vevay, and it illustrates the popularity of 
this region that this hotel, in its construction and appoint- 
ments, is fully equal to any one we have seen on the Continent, 
and it is not easy to imagine a more pleasing scene of blue 
lake and striking mountains than its beautiful grounds look 
out upon. 

Next morning drove to the Church of St. Martin, built 
about 1500, with nothing interesting about it except a fine 
view across the lake from the terrace where it stands, an 
agreeable square tower, and the fact that it contains the graves 
of the regicides Ludlow and Broughton, who took refuge and 
died here, the Swiss refusing to surrender them at the demand 
of Charles II. Broughton read the sentence of the court, con- 
demning Charles I. to death, and associated with him as joint 
clerk was John Phelps, also buried here. On the wall is a 
tasteful tablet with a graceful inscription placed there by 
his descendants " William Walter Phelps of New Jersey and 
Charles Phelps of Massachusetts, from across the sea." We 
drove up the gradual hills back of Vevay to the Chateau of 
Hauteville, two miles from the lake, and were shown through 
ever so fine and large gardens laid out in terraces, with end- 
less profusion of flowers in beds of many forms, and roses such 
as I never saw the like of in size and hues. The chateau looks 
down upon a broad expanse sloping in gentle undulations to 
the lake's border, with miles of vineyards, noble copses of 
forest-trees — oak, chestnut, walnut — and flourishing orchards 
of apples, pears and plums. 

On our drive to the Castle of Blonay, two miles higher up, 
a quaint, turreted, inhabitable structure, where the family of 
that name has lived for more centuries than anybody seems 
to know, we passed through the hamlet of La Chiesaz, where 
an artist, now in Paris, whose work I seem to remember in 
some way, A. Beguin, was born, and where he exhibited at 
once his youthful artistic precocity and exuberance of animal 



186 Lausanne. — Its Cathedral. 

spirits by a considerable number of huge cartoons on the 
plaster walls of the roadside houses, stables and other out- 
buildings. These are mostly rollickingly facetious, rough, 
vigorous sketches of running horses galloping madly after 
having hurled their riders down fathomless abysses, and so 
forth, but with a female head or two of much beauty and 
grace. 

We have come nearer to seeing the ideal Swiss chalet here 
than anywhere else, but have not yet seen one — I mean the 
chalet shown in pictures and models. The old peasant houses 
in the Black Forest, the shepherds' huts perched all along 
the mountain-sides everywhere, the little fancy houses where 
the comfortable bourgeois disports himself in his summer 
vacation, all present more or less of the features of the model 
chalet, but no one I have seen unites them all or even the 
greater part. The ideal chalet, the national costumes, the 
mountain horn and its Ranz des Vaches are still as far away as 
ever, although I have Frattini's assurance that they are still 
in existence somewhere. 

September 12. — After lunch took railroad for Lausanne, an 
hour's ride, and passed the night at the Hotel Gibbon. In 
the garden sloping down toward the lake from the hotel the 
great historian is said to have composed much of that stalwart 
book which, promising at first to be a comfort and ally of 
Silas Wegg, finally led to his discomfiture and overthrow, 
" The Decline and Fall Off of the Roman Empire." Lausanne 
slopes sharply down a small mountain called Mont Jorat, is 
well built, has 30,000 population and a prosperous, bright and 
refined appearance, as if many refined people are among its 
inhabitants. We drove up to the "Signal," above the town, 
where we should have gained a wide view of valley, lake and 
mountain, if a thick haze had not shut off the distant scene of 
the Mont Blanc range, as it has done provokingly since we 
reached Geneva. The Cathedral consecrated by Gregory X. 
in the presence of Rudolph of Hapsburg has an interesting 
tower and some fine carvings, and is a good specimen of the 
Gothic style, but is bare and melancholy inside. No sight is 
more incongruous and unpleasing than an old cathedral 
stripped of all ornaments, its shrines desolate, its statues 
broken, its monuments defaced, and one end of its transept 
or a little space in front of the chancel " coldly furnished 



Legislatiofi in a C/idteau. 187 

forth" with two dozen skimp fresh pine benches, with rows of 
new hymn-books atop of the railings, where a congregation of 
some form of Protestant Dissenters holds its stated worship. 
The Church of England comes so directly from the Church of 
Rome that its ceremonial worship in the great cathedrals of 
that countr}'' is nearly enough allied to the Mother Church to 
furnish a pomp still partly suitable to these vast interiors, but 
the beggarly bareness and chill austerity of these translated 
Swiss cathedrals are enough to freeze the very marrow of the 
skeleton of worship. There is a well-preserved castle here on 
a commanding height, but we contented ourselves with a 
survey of its outer walls and quaint round-towers looking 
threateningly down upon the town. 

Took railroad p.m. to Neuchatel (two hours), on west side 
of the beautiful lake of same name, and had rooms at the 
Bellevue, overlooking the deep green water. We part here 
from esteemed Brooklyn friends who had joined us at Geneva. 
The lake is eighteen miles long by three to four miles wide, 
modestly but charmingly set in its frame of gently sloping 
hills. Neuchatel has a population of 16,000, is the capital of 
the canton of the same name, rises sharply up the slope of 
the Jura from the lake's edge, has a prosperous and contented 
look, and with its agreeable commingling of new and ancient 
architecture, most picturesque site and surroundings, forms 
almost as interesting a spot as any lake town we have visited, 
always excepting Lucerne, the unsurpassable. On a height 
above the town is a picturesque old chateau restored in 
parts and the seat of the cantonal government. We looked 
into the legislative chamber, with seats for one hundred and 
nine deputies to make the laws for a population of 100,000. 
Very quaint and comfortable are their quarters here, with 
magnificent views from the old stone balconies opening from 
the hall, offering all possible inducements to make legislation 
slow and easy. The Chamber holds four sessions a year, of 
two weeks each, and the members are paid eight francs per 
day. Suffrage is free, all citizens of the legal age being en- 
titled to vote. There is no veto of the acts of the Chamber, 
but if within two months after the passage of a bill, three 
thousand citizens of the canton shall have signed a petition 
to that effect, the measure must be submitted to a vote of the 
whole body of citizens in the canton. 



188 The Ancestors of Count Louis 

Visited the Municipal Museum and Picture Gallery, where 
in a handsome and commodious building is housed an inter- 
esting collection of old armor, domestic utensils, pottery, and 
perhaps one hundred and fifty oil paintings, of fair average 
merit. All this in a town of 16,000 people. 

In the choir of the old Abbey church adjoining the chateau 
is an interesting Gothic monument with fifteen life-size 
figures, erected in 1372 by Count Louis of Neuchatel, these 
being effigies, male and female, of his ancestors. The men 
are clad in armor, the women in white robes, with golden 
hair. The ladies have a modest, gentle, submissive and truly 
pious air, suitable to saints in peaceful rest. The artist, either 
from the nature of the subjects he had to deal with or from 
his lack of skill in expression, was not so happy with the dis- 
tinguished males of that turbulent line. One of them, no 
doubt a tough rascal in his day, stands with praying hands 
and an artificial look of overdone sanctity, as if he hoped to 
impose on St. Peter and slip into heaven by virtue of a tardy 
piety, while another seems about to start off with a mincing 
gait and confident air, as if he fully thought he was' expected 
above and his coming would very considerably augment the 
glory of the heavenly state ; still another has the visor of 
his steel morion drawn furtively down over his eyes, as if he 
trusted to sneak through the celestial gate in disguise ; and 
altogether these old mortuary images, as in almost all in- 
stances I have seen, are more comical than serious. 

The guests at the Bellevue and elsewhere recently are 
largely English people, for the most part well-bred and un- 
demonstrative. Occasionally an exception presents itself, 
and opposite us at the table d'hote last evening sat a demon- 
strative, youngish couple, whose speech was so little like what 
I was accustomed to hear in England, that for some minutes I 
thought them to be talking in German, they so murdered the 
king's English in their pronunciation. When one comes to 
pronounce ^/««^^ as if it were written glons and similarly tor- 
tures every word made use of, mystification can go no farther. 
I used to notice at home how much more English those English 
who live in America are than the English themselves ; and I 
have met an occasional American over here of a sort I have 
never seen at home. It would seem as if these self-conscious 
tourists were fearful their nationality would not be readily 



Berne. 189 

discovered unless they exaggerated the national peculiari- 
ties. 

September 12. — Came to Berne by rail, forty-one miles, fol- 
lowing the western shore of the lake at the base of the Jura 
range, here nearer and more abrupt, the slopes all along smil- 
ing in vineyards, where, alas for the owners ! many yellow 
leaves show the fatal progress of the phyloxera, whose ravages 
among the lakes here began, I am told, three years ago. The 
train leaves the Lake of Neuchatel, and soon after reaches the 
pretty little Lake of Bienne, nine miles long, with gentle 
shores sprinkled with red-roofed villages and gemmed with 
the wooded island of St. Peter, where Rousseau passed the 
summer of 1765. 

At Neuveville we enter Canton Berne, leaving the French for 
the German language, and changing cars at Bienne, cross the 
broad, green river Aare, and after twenty miles of charming 
scenery are set down at the Bernerhof in rooms looking down 
the valley of the Aare and across to the magnificent range of 
the Bernese Alps. We should have enjoyed a perfect view of 
these on our way from Neuchatel, but the September haze 
interfered, and here it is the same, only, as the sun was setting, 
the Jungfrau; Eiger and all the range shone out quite clearly, 
suffused with a roseate glow. The weather here is much like 
the Vermont weather on the Twenty-mile stream at this time 
of year, and the signs of autumn in the atmosphere and vege- 
tation much the same. 

Berne is the capital of the canton of Berne as well as of 
Switzerland, for here the National Council meets and the 
President of the Republic resides, both Council and President 
having for their use a handsome building in the Florentine 
style, 400 by 165 feet. The city dates from the latter part of 
the twelfth century, and has undergone the many vicissi- 
tudes common to the annals of all old European towns, 
struggling for its rights with oppressors on every hand. It is 
picturesquely situated on a promontory of sandstone rock, 
about which the clear, green waters of the Aare wind 100 feet 
below, a small part of the old town lying down by the river, but 
the chief portion on the level heights above. It has a popula- 
tion of some 45,000, and while the modern portion is well 
built, there are more mediaeval features left than is common 
in the Swiss towns, an especial feature being the arcades, 



190 The Ogre Fountain. — The Cathedral at Berne. 

formed by extending strong, slanting buttresses down from 
the second story of the compact houses on each side of a street, 
opening side arches between them, leaving, say, ten feet in 
width open into the street side of the first story and arching it 
overhead, so as to form continuous covered ways the entire 
length of the street. The shops open into these, so that the 
passer-by is protected from all kinds of weather. Arcades or 
sheltered passages for shops are not unusual in the continental 
cities, but not of this sort. Another feature here is the foun- 
tains, one of which, called the Ogre Fountain, has on top of a 
queerly decorated column the life-size figure of an ogre in act 
of devouring a child, and with pockets and girdle stuck full 
of others. Frattini says mothers here scare their children by 
threatening them with the ogre. The Bernese children are 
brought up among ample terrors, for the heraldic emblem of 
Berne being the bear, Bruin not only appears everywhere in 
effigies, realistic and grotesque, but an open den of these 
beasts is maintained and has been from time immemorial, at the 
expense of the city. The den is a deep-sunk, circular pit, some 
80 feet in diameter^ divided into equal parts by a high wall, the 
circular barrier being about 15 feet high from the bottom, and 
made of dressed stone rising waist-high above the terrace, 
from which visitors look down and are allowed to throw to the 
sluggish guardians of the town bread and vegetables. They 
have a handsome house of stone for shelter, and are well cared 
for. We saw six of a small brown species lazily disporting 
themselves. and begging contributions from above as know- 
ingly as if they wore frock and cowl and had relics to show. 

The west portal of the Cathedral has elaborate sculptures, 
representing the " Last Judgment," of several hundred small, 
well-wrought figures showing throngs of the blessed and 
the lost going separate ways, the first placidly exultant, the 
second hiding their faces in confusion. The pigeons have a 
favorite roost atop of the inextricable heads, and whiten the 
crowns of saint and sinner impartially. Another portal shows 
life-size figures of the wise and foolish virgins, the latter much 
dejected, and the foolishest one of all striving to wipe away a 
stony tear with a great hand of stone in the most grotesque way. 
Inside are some old stalls of carven oak with portraits of apos- 
tles and saints of exceeding beauty, and stained glass of the 
fifteenth century. In one of the chapels is a Pietas in Carrara 



A Curious Old Clock. 191 

marble by Tscharner, sweetly expressive, designed in 1870. 
The same artist executed a statue of Berthold von Ziihringen, 
the founder of Berne, with a bear for his standard-bearer, and 
bronzes in the pediment showing scenes in the building of the 
city, all full of spirit, as is the equestrian statue of Rudolph 
von Erlach, who won the battle of Laupen in 1339. At the 
four corners of the pediment are four bears of life size and 
appearance, all designed by Volmar, of this city. The 
unfinished Cathedral tower contains nine bells, the largest of 
which, according to a local guide-book, weighs twelve tons, 
and is the seventh largest bell in the world, and the largest 
which is rung by swinging. 

The old city walls no longer exist, but on the east front of 
the tower over one of the ancient gates is a curious old clock 
having at one side of the great quaint dial a painted figure of a 
mediaeval king seated in his chair of state, with a huge hour- 
glass resting on his knee. A little higher up, at his left hand, 
stands the court-jester, holding a bell-rope in his hand, with a 
mocking figure at his side peering across at a bear rampant, 
and below his majesty a circular procession of mounted men- 
at-arms and grotesque bears marching on their hind legs, 
bitted and armed. At two minutes before the hour an asth- 
matic cock on the right of the royal chair crows wearily, the 
jester sharply pulls his bell-rope and rings a clear-sounding 
bell hid somewhere out of sight in the tower, and on the hour 
the cock again crows ; his majesty turns his hour-glass and 
extends his sceptre, the mocking figure salutes by taking off 
its hat, the rampant bear returns the compliment, the armed 
procession below wheels slowly into view, the great tower-bell 
strikes the hour, a minute later the weary cock crows again, 
and thus is each hour of the day duly honored and has been 
for I don't know how many changeful years. 

There stands on one of the squares a large stone building 
(why should I write stone, when almost every structure every- 
where here, as elsewhere in Europe, except the mountain cha- 
lets, is of stone ?) where until a late period enough grain was kept 
stored to supply the city for four months. Improved means of 
communication render such precaution against famine needless 
now. Under this storehouse is a huge old vaulted wine-cellar, 
with venerable tuns ranged along the sides, holding, as the 
measures painted on the heads declare, some ten thousand 



192 Fribourg. — Its Grand Organ. 

gallons, some sixty-two thousand bottles. Plain tables with 
benches run along the centre, and wine, both white and red, 
is served to customers in pint decanters, " to be consumed on 
the premises." I tasted the white wine and found it, like all 
the Swiss wines, too acid for my palate. I might say that so 
far I have not found the quality of any wine I have ordered 
better than one gets in New York, nor at the hotels any 
cheaper. 

Took train and ran out to P'ribourg, twenty miles, to hear 
the organ in the Gothic Church of St. Nicholas, and found 
one of the most picturesque towns we have seen. I wonder 
more stress is not laid on it by those we meet. I certainly 
would urge any one visiting this part of Switzerland not 
to pass it by. It is situated, much like Berne, on a still 
more abrupt, rocky height, w4th the clear green Sarine flow- 
ing windingly by. Such quaint rows of houses on the steep 
hill-side, with the gray walls of an old nunnery washed by the 
clear stream ! In a square near the handsome Rathhaus 
stands an exceedingly old lime-tree, fourteen feet in girth, 
banded with iron, its two flourishing limbs resting on a heavy 
frame. The story is that in 1476 a boy came running into 
town from the battle of Morat, breathless and bloody, and 
crying " Victory !" fell dead. The lime-twig he bore in his 
hand was stuck in the ground and became this tree. 

I had supposed, in a vague sort of way, that somehow the 
Roeblings were the first to build cable bridges, but it seems 
that they only built them on a larger scale than had been 
known. Here at Fribourg is a p07it siispendu built by Chaley 
in 1834, 810 feet long and 168 feet above the Sarine, precisely 
like a miniature of the great one below Niagara Falls. A 
little farther up is another, built in 1840, over the Vallee de 
Gotteron, 747 feet long and 305 feet above the water ! 

The organ in the Church of St. Nicholas at Fribourg, rank- 
ing as almost the finest in Europe, was built by Mooser, and 
has 67 stops and 7800 pipes, some of them 32 feet long. The 
significance of these facts I do not, in my ignorance of music, 
realize, but I may venture to say that I was moved and de- 
lighted by its great power and sweetness in the hands of the 
master who performed the following programme, which I set 
down as a token of our visit to Fribourg, a journey of forty 



An Organ Recital in the Church of St. Nicholas. 193 

miles, to be present for an hour, at 1.30 p.m., at the great 
organ recital : 

1. Freludium, . . .^ . . A.W.Bach, 

2. Andante, Hummel. 

3. Fuga, T. S. Bach. 

4. Priire de Moise, .... Rossini. 

5. Invocation, Guilmant. 

6. Scene Pastoral, T. Vogt. 

In the last number a storm is described, and one rarely 
hears louder or grander peals of thunder than rolled from this 
mighty organ. 

Over the west portal of the church is another "Last Judg- 
ment," represented by a great number of small figures carved 
with much skilful care. The damned are being driven by 
grinning devils to the scene of torture, where a great caldron, 
already full of seething bodies, is steaming over a hot fire 
which a little imp is fanning with a pair of bellows. Above 
the rim of the caldron rise faces distorted with pain, a huge 
monster with goggle eyes is in act of swallowing one victim 
out of a throng bound and lying in a pile before him, and, 
huger in bulk, sits Satan, high up, diabolically exultant. This 
horrible scene was cut in enduring stone by pious hands no 
doubt, from designs by pious architects, approved by holy 
fathers of the Church and set up in this consecrated spot for 
the instruction and admonition of the faithful and the pro^ 
fane. 

I have neglected to say that the chimneys of the old houses. 
in Berne are a curious feature. They have little sloping roofs 
with projecting eaves, and rows of tiny openings just below 
for the smoke to escape, and odd little arches and circles 
and windows with tiny pent-house roofs over them set on 
brackets. The effect of a house depends much on its chim- 
neys. Geneva is half spoiled by the vermicular snarl of gal- 
vanized iron pipes sticking out of its chimneys. 

I inquired out the best tailor here and ordered a full suit of 
clothes, for which the steady little German measured me to 
an extent beyond anything I had known and sent them home 
in two days. The cloth I selected out of an ample stock is of 
Scotch make, such as I have often worn at home, is made up 
13 



194 Interlaken. — Amateur Tourists, 

with good trimmings and work, and cost one hundred francs, 
or twenty dollars. 

We get good pears and plums, but not good apples nor 
often good peaches. 

September i6. — Came to Interlaken ; by rail to Thun, then up 
the lake of same name nine miles by boat, total distance about 
thirty miles, and have rooms in the Victoria, one of the very 
largest and best-appointed hotels in Switzerland, and always 
full during the season. Interlaken is a long, straggling vil- 
lage, made up of hotels, pensions and shops, situated in the 
midst of a fertile and cultivated plain formed by the deposits 
'Of two rivers, one the Liitschine, flowing into what is now the 
^Lake of Brienz, and the Lombach, discharging its waters into 
X,ake Thun. These rivers during an enormous period of time 
"deposited the matter they brought down from the glaciers at 
'ctwo opposite points on the north and south sides of what is 
Relieved to have been one body of water, and at last cut it 
into two nearly equal parts, forming a plain, of something like 
a mile square, through which the Aare flows, connecting the 
two lakes, both of which it feeds and empties. Interlaken 
(between the lakes) has only the natural beauty of its situa- 
tion to attract travellers, but that is very great, as it stands 
among lofty mountains and agreeable scenery near at hand. 
The plain is highly cultivated, with orchards and groves and 
avenues of great walnut and chestnut trees, meadows and tilled 
fields. 

This is a favorite point for tourists intending pedestrian 
excursions. We meet various degrees of these everywhere, 
with more or less formidable alpenstocks, iron-pointed, and 
sometimes headed with a hatchet or pick. The greater num- 
ber are amateurs, who do not take the mountains very serious- 
ly, while the greater part who do, present a worn appearance, 
something like the contestants in a " go-as-you-please" walking 
match on the third day. A great many in mountain costume 
look as if dressed to figure in the chorus of Scott's " Anne of 
Geierstein" done into opera. I noticed at Weggis, on Lake 
Lucerne, standing on the wharf as the boat touched there, a 
pretty French girl with a long alpenstock, from which fluttered 
the ends of a blue ribbon. She wore dainty Parisian shoes with 
high heels, well forward, and fresh kid gloves. But to render it 
apparent to all beholders that she considered herself doing 



The Ranz des Vac he s. 195 

duty among the Alps, she had donned a stout skirt, looped 
up so as not to interfere with the free movements of her neat 
ankles on the mountain-paths, and had turned back the col- 
lar from her shapely neck so as to allow the sun to impart 
to It a healthy brown hue, which it is permitted one to hope 
will attest her stories of wearisome and perilous clamberings 
when she shall have got safely home again. But there is a 
certain number of young pedestrians of quite another sort 
who, with stout staff and slender scrip, make light of the 
difficulties of these formidable mountain-peaks and passes 
and come in fresh and tranquil after an all-day's march. 
Such were a young Englishman and his two sisters who came 
into Andermatt in the evening of the stormy night we passed 
there, having walked from the Rhone Glacier, and directly 
appeared at the table d'hote in evening costumes, showing no 
traces whatever of their thirty-mile tramp over muddy moun- 
tain-paths. Weighted with threescore years and two hundred 
pounds avoirdupois, so that I get my views from the top of a 
mountain carriage or some height reached by " funicular" or 
other sort of railroad, I try to keep myself from envying these 
active young climbers by thinking how much more at liberty 
I am in making my observations than they, who clamber up the 
face of these great heights through forests which shut out all 
views and up crags which claim their full strength and atten- 
tion, to be rewarded after the toilful strain is over in a wider 
or grander view than the ordinary tourist is capable of attain- 
ing. 

We drove up the narrow valley of the Liitschine to Lauter- 
brunnen, eight miles, between prodigious mountain-walls 
which yet nurse soft and tranquil meadows under their frown- 
ing crags, dotted thick with brown chalets and musical with 
the cheerful bells of sleek cattle grazing in bits of greenest 
pasture. At last we are favored with the Ranz des Vaches, not 
as one would prefer to have it, from the pipe of the free-born, 
untamed descendant of Tell, high up among the clouds, but 
from the long horn of a degenerate son, who by the wayside 
sounded its few notes clear and bright as those of a key- 
bugle, for a small eleemosynary coin. But this was a good deal 
better than nothing, and the well-accented call, to which from 
dell and high mountain-side " 'twixt the gloaming and the 
mirk the kye come hame," died out in soft, far echoes most 



196 The Jungfrau. — Giessbach Falls. — A Wofiderful Canon. 

pleasingly. These Swiss cattle are fine, gentle creatures, 
smallish mostly, snugly built and strikingly like the Alder- 
neys, great numbers having all the external marks, fawn 
color, black switch, small horns, and, I was told, black mouths. 
I tried several times to find out something definite about them, 
but could only get for answer that they are " Uri '' cattle. 

At a turn of the valley at Lauterbrunnen we came face to 
face with the Jungfrau rising in dazzling glory, with the 
Eiger and Monch beside her, and on our right close at hand 
the Staubbach falls from an abrupt wall of rock nearly looo 
feet — at first a little cascade shining high up, as if poured 
from the clouds, then dissolved into mist by its long descent, 
and at last collecting itself again in a little stream at the bot- 
tom. 

In the afternoon we took steamboat up Lake Brienz to visit 
the Giessbach Falls, made by a considerable stream which 
falls abruptly a distance of iioo feet from one of the great 
mountains closely shutting in the lake. 

September i8. — Left Interlaken for Lucerne, going by steam- 
boat up to the head of Lake Brienz, eight miles, to the brown, 
sleepy village of the same name, where we took the railway 
crossing the Brunig Pass. At Meiringen we lunched, had 
three hours to wait, and visited the gorge formed by the Aare, 
having cut its way during unknown ages sharply down 
through a rocky mountain-range. The canon so formed is 
even more wonderful than the Black Canon of the Gunnison. 
For more than half a mile the perpendicular walls on each 
side rise looo feet, and so near together that in places one, by 
extending his arms, can touch both sides. At the bottom of 
this awful chasm rushes the Aare, gray and icy from the near 
glaciers whence it springs, and the hard rock of the walls is 
worn into enormous pot-holes, whose remains present many 
fantastic resemblances to the architectural work of man's 
hand. It is made possible to see the whole extent of this sur- 
prising wonder by an admirable foot-path made, at very con- 
siderable cost and great labor, by setting iron braces into the 
stone wall on one side and laying planks of wood on them 
with a secure railing. This careful path runs the entire 
length of the canon, some twenty feet above the stream. 

Our train, with an engine constructed for the purpose, climb- 
ed up the Brunig through pastures, orchards and fine woods 



The Hotels of Stvitzerland.—Mt. Pilatus. 197 

of walnut, chestnut and beech, with broad views, widening as 
we ascend, of the rich valley of the Aare far below, the sage- 
green expanse of Lake Brienz and the noble mountains 
around it far beyond Interlaken. At the height of Brunig 
Pass we are 3400 feet above the sea, and descend to Lucerne 
through wild and pleasing scenery, reaching that charming 
town at 6 p.m. to find the Schweizerhof, where we had rooms 
before, so full as not to be able to take us in, although Frat- 
tini had telegraphed from Interlaken the night before. The 
landlord had been good enough to secure us rooms at the 
Swan, where we were made comfortable for the night. 

There are more than one thousand hotels in Switzerland, 
and never has any such pressure been made on them as during 
this season, when the best ones turn away great numbers 
every day. They are admirable hotels in every respect, and 
managed with such efficiency that they do not seem crowded, 
and everything goes on without friction or worry. The 
charges are not high for the quality of the accommodation, 
and the bills, of precise and, to an American, vexatiously long 
list of items, when footed up will be found less than those of our 
best hotels. The European innkeeper can afford the same ac- 
commodations as his transatlantic brother at less prices be- 
cause he avoids by his methods the wasteful extravagance of 
the American hotel-table, where a guest is permitted to order 
unlimited dishes, and pays the same as if he restricted himself 
to one. On this side of the water the guest pays for just what 
he has, no more and no less, and is not allowed to waste more 
at table than he consumes there. The feeing of servants, 
when one comes to understand just what the custom is, does 
not go beyond what the waiters of various kinds expect at our 
city and watering-place hotels. The service everywhere here 
is excellent. 

September 19. — Took train at 6 a.m. on the Brunig road back 
as far as Alpnach-Gestad, where, having joined a party of 
Brooklyn friends, we made the ascent of Mount Pilatus by a 
railway which began running last June. It is a marvel of 
engineering, boldly conceived and admirably executed, and not 
to be ventured on without a tremor, as it climbs squarely 
up the mountain's face on an average gradient of 40 feet in 
100, bridges awful chasms, winds along dizzy depths, scales 
precipices, and after two hours sets the thankful passenger 



198 Metz. 

down a few feet from the summit of the highest peak, 6965 
feet above the sea. It is not common to get a good view from 
Pilatus, his top being much oftener hidden in clouds than the 
Rigi, 1000 feet lower. But we enjoyed a day absolutely perfect, 
a " day of a thousand," as the manager of the resting-place on 
the summit informed us. During the forenoon all the vast ex- 
panse of land and water below was buried from our sight 
under the shining billows of a sea of clouds, out of which 
rose, all about the horizon, hundreds of mountain-peaks, many 
green and smiling, like " sunny-sided Teneriffe," while the 
entire range of the Appenzell, Glarner and Bernese Alps, includ- 
ing Sentis, Ruchen-Glarnisch, Finsteraarhorn, Wetterhorn, 
Monch, Eiger, Jungfrau, Blumlisalp, Stockhorn, and a hundred 
lesser peaks, reared their sublime heads, refulgent with everlast- 
ing snow, into a sky without stain. Below, the translucent 
clouds, soft as carded wool, shifted and parted, often disclosing 
glimpses of the green earth, blue lakes and dwarfed villages ; 
above, in wide semicircle, the most illustrious of earth's moun- 
tains, cold, steadfast, unchangeable, the image of eternity ! 
Later in the day the clouds at our feet slowly melted away, 
like the unsubstantial fabric of a vision, and the whole vast 
panorama revealed itself smilingly, valleys, plains, lakes and 
forests and mighty hills, verdure-clad, with the towers, spires 
and houses of Lucerne clustered at the foot of its cruciform 
lake. Not again may I expect to look on such a scene of 
mingled sublimity and loveliness. 

We took the evening train to Basel and slept there, leaving 
by early morning train for Metz, the capital of Lorraine, where 
we arrived at 2 p.m., passing through Strassburg and again 
gaining a look at its lofty, graceful Cathedral spire. This old 
Roman town of Metz, plundered by Vandals and Huns in the 
fifth century, the capital of the kingdom of Austrasia in the 
sixth century, then a free city of the German Empire, was 
captured by the French in 1552, and incorporated with Ger- 
many in 1871. The French made it one of the most strongly 
fortified places in Europe, the Germans have strengthened it 
still more, and now it is a vast fortress, girdled with outworks, 
nearly fifteen miles in circumference, and swarming every- 
where with soldiers, sixteen thousand of whom are stationed 
in the town itself, the citizen population of which numbers 
something over 50,000 — less than before it was annexed to Ger- 



The Cathedral. — Public Cemetejy. — Treves. 199 

many, and it is said more than a fourth of these are German 
settlers. 

We met soldiers everywhere, lounging on the streets and 
squares, marching in squads, drilling in battalions in the open 
spaces of the suburbs, in a bewildering confusion of uniforms, 
blue, green, black, red, with intermediate shades, there being 
as many uniforms as states comprising the Empire. Officers 
of various rank strut up and down, fine, proud, bold-looking 
men, with strong faces, broad shoulders, erect, soldiers from 
top to toe. 

We visited the fine Gothic Cathedral, dating from the 
thirteenth century, with its unusually lofty nave and old stained 
glass, and drove to the public cemetery, where the French 
have erected a great monument to seven thousand of their 
countrymen buried here in a vast grave after the great battles 
of August and September, 1870, which resulted in the surrender 
of Metz by General Bazaine, with nearly two hundred thousand 
men and a prodigious amount of munitions of war. The mon- 
ument is covered with wreaths and touching mementos of 
many kinds sent from all parts of France, and hung here in 
memory of a husband, son, or brother, sacrificed to the weak 
ambition of Napoleon III., whose star sunk in blood behind 
the hills of Gravelotte, now saddened by the touch of the 
frost of two nights ago, while the blue Moselle, then choked 
with the slain, flows peacefully between its vine-clad banks. 

We came on to Treves by evening train, and have good lodg- 
ings at the Hotel de Treves. 

September 20. — I came here mainly to see the famous Roman 
ruins, and am not disappointed in them. Treves (German, 
Trier), on the right bank of the Moselle, with 26,000 inhab- 
itants, is called the oldest town in Germany, was founded by 
the Romans soon after Caesar had conquered the Belgic tribe 
of the Treveri, 56 B.C., during the fourth century was a fre- 
quent residence of the Roman emperors, and the Roman re- 
mains here are said to be the finest on this side of the Alps. 
Constantine introduced Christianity, and from the year 328 
onward for fifteen centuries it was the residence of the bishops, 
archbishops and electors. All this is stated in my trusty Bae- 
deker. The site is a noble one, on a broad plain watered by 
the Moselle and girdled by soft ranges of wooded hills. The 
vine flourishes on its banks, and the Moselle wines, ranging from 



200 Remains of the Porta JVtgra, Roman Palace and Public Paths. 

one to ten marks per bottle, are among the best of the light- 
bodied white wines. There is now in session here what is some- 
what ambitiously called the Wine Congress, consisting of rep- 
resentative wine-growers from all the vine districts of Germany, 
their object being to discuss methods of growing and marketing 
wines, testing the qualities of different wines for a series of years, 
and so forth. I have tried to pick up some information from 
these intelligent gentlemen, several of whom speak English 
well and courteously answer questions. I will keep what I 
think I have learned — which is not much, but seems something 
to me, as I knew so little before — until I have seen and located 
the choice regions they speak of on the Rhine. 

I was astonished to see such a perfect relic of the palmy 
days of Rome as the Porta Nigra, a fortified gate of the 
old Roman wall which once surrounded the city, with its 
towers mostly in perfect condition. This imposing structure 
of red sandstone is 115 feet long, 75 to 90 feet high, and 
29 feet in depth. The huge blocks of sandstone are fas- 
tened with braces of iron and copper instead of mortar. It 
rises in three lofty stories, with handsome pillars between the 
windows ; the arched passage was defended by a portcullis, 
and an enemy passing the outer barrier found himself in an 
inner space where he could be assaulted on all sides and from 
above — a most satisfactory ruin. Another fine ruin is the 
Roman Palace, of great extent, one massive corner of which is 
65 feet high. It must have been a regal abode in its time, 
with its enormous halls, courts, and spacious servants' quar- 
ters, all heated by warm air, the channels for which are visi- 
ble in many places. It was built of broad, thin bricks, laid 
in mortar, the name of the manufacturer still legible on the 
edges of some. There are also the extensive remains of the 
public baths lately exhumed near the Moselle, which supplied 
the water through covered brick aqueducts ; and besides the 
spacious swimming-pools there were tepid and hot baths ; hot 
air to produce them being applied under the tiled floors. The 
arena of an amphitheatre, 228 feet in diameter from north to 
south and 159 feet from east to west, is distinctly shown, with 
its entrances for spectators, dens for the wild beasts and doors 
for the gladiators. It accommodated thirty thousand specta- 
tors ; and here in 306, Constantine, who had then " experienced 
religion," caused several thousand captive Franks to be torn 



A Library of Rare and Valuable Books. 201 

by wild beasts ; and seven years afterward thousands of the 
Bructeri were slain here for the amusement of the populace. 

Four hundred years ago the monks of a monastery here 
began a library, which has been growing in the old vaulted 
rooms ever since, and is now owned by the city. Here are 
some of the rarest and most valuable books in the world locked 
away in vaults and constantly watched by a custodian who 
exhibits them with a great deal of proper pride — for a consid- 
eration. Among them is the Bible of Faust and Gutenberg of 
1450 and the Catholicon or Dictionary of 1460, and the entire 
Bible written on parchment in the eighth century in a beauti- 
ful hand, but so fine that it cannot be read without a glass of 
very considerable magnifying power. There is a specimen 
dating from 950 of the art of illumination as then practised, 
which the librarian insists is the finest known — the " Codex 
Egberti." But the crown of all, which is never allowed out of 
its glass case, is the " Codex Aureus," containing the four 
gospels, presented by Ada, the sister of Charlemagne, to the 
Abbey of St. Maximin. It was written in the latter part of 
the eighth century by a monk of the monastery of Rigeneau, 
on the Bodensee — Lake Constance — and was bound in the 
fourteenth century in gold inlaid with precious stones, among 
them a cameo as large as the palm of my hand, engraved with 
a representation of the family of Constantine, done in his life- 
time. The librarian stated that the city had been offered 
twenty-five thousand pounds for this volume. He stated that 
the first Napoleon, stopping here on one of his campaigns, 
came into the library and selected some four hundred volumes 
and sent them to Paris, where they are now in the National 
Library, and that, in concluding the peace with France in 187 1, 
Germany would have required their restitution, but it was 
overlooked, and that no money which has since been offered — 
and he mentioned a very large amount — has been able to 
secure their return. On the shelves in the various recesses of 
this library are rows on rows of huge folios running back 
almost to the beginning of printing ; some of enormous thick- 
ness, bound in carved boards dark with age, boar's-hide and 
heavy embossed Spanish leather with enormous brass and iron 
clasps ; and many with chains attached to fasten them to the 
wall, so they might not be carried away. There is a pair of 
handsome globes made one hundred and fifty years ago, finely 



202 Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Helen.— The Holy Coat. 

mounted and not less than four feet in diameter. On the ter- 
restrial one California is represented as a long, narrow island. 

The Leibfrauenkirche is an interesting early Gothic church, 
dating from the early part of the thirteenth century, with a 
portal ornamented with sculptures of equal date, exhibiting 
scenes from the Old and New Testaments. It is connected 
with the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Helen by the most 
perfect cloisters I have yet seen, broad and arched, surround- 
ing a cheerful, sunny court. The Cathedral itself is in- 
teresting because a part of it was a quadrangular basilica, 
built b}^ the Emperor Valentinian I. about 370, and soon after 
changed into a Christian church and modified from time to 
time, so that several styles of architecture are shown in the 
different parts. 

But the distinguishing honor of the Cathedral, and indeed 
of the city of Treves, is the possession of the " Holy Coat," the 
seamless tunic or outer garment of our Saviour, said to have 
been brought from Palestine in the fourth century by that 
indefatigable and eminently successful relic-hunter, the Em- 
press Helena, mother of Constantine, and by her deposited 
here and exhibited solemnly to the public at long intervals of 
time, the latest exposition having occurred in 1844, when a 
prodigious multitude of pilgrims from all parts of Europe 
gathered here to bless their eyes and hearts with the vision of 
it, to possess themselves of articles charged with miraculous 
virtue from having touched it, and to participate in the bene- 
fits of the miracles it works. As this tunica sacrosancta is now 
laid away in its costly shrine we may not see it, but as there 
are, I believe, twenty others in existence in various parts of 
Europe for which the same claims are made, we may chance 
to come across one yet. This one is described as smock-like 
in shape, with a hole for the neck and short half-sleeves. The 
color is a peculiar shade of brown, and the appearance like 
that of old Chinese silk without gloss. The history of this 
relic can really be traced no further back than the latter part 
of the twelfth century, when it was " rediscovered" — a most 
helpful and convenient word. It is still an object of profound 
reverence to the Catholic world, and doubtless the streets of 
this quaint old city will swarm again with visitors at the next 
promised exposition two years hence. 

September 23. — The weather this morning was cold and foggy 



Porcelain Stoves. — A Bed-Poultice. 203 

and threatened a decidedly bad day, but our good fortune in 
this regard continued, for on our way by rail to Coblentz the 
fog soon lifted and the sun came out, not warm, but cheerful. 
We have had quite cool weather for a week, and in Treves had 
a fire steadily in our sitting-room in one of those tall, cylin- 
drical porcelain stoves which are found in the rooms we 
occupy everywhere in Germany and Switzerland as well. They 
are of many sizes and patterns ; some a long cylinder running 
up to the ceiling of the room, with a fluted capital, some half 
as high, others square. Sometimes they are ornamented with 
brass bands running round them. In the shops where antiqui- 
ties are sold I have seen old ones with the tiles painted in 
figures and landscapes, and in a room in the house of Goethe's 
father in Frankfort is a charmingly quaint one with excellent 
pictures on it. Ours at Treves worked nicely and gave out a 
soft and agreeable warmth somewhat as does the freestone 
stove one meets with now and then in old-fashioned houses 
in New England. But the most astonishing contrivance for 
protection from cold, and one as universally in use as the 
porcelain stove, is the thick sack of down, a little over three 
feet square, used as a coverlet on the beds. It is impossible 
to understand how so sensible a people as the Germans got 
into the way of tolerating such a covering at night ; for it is 
neither one thing nor the other, and lies on the sleeper in the 
centre or at either end of him like a ridiculous, huge, puffy 
poultice. Nothing is more comical than a human creature 
lying asleep with one of these down bags on his stomach, rising 
and falling with his breathing. 

Our way to Coblentz lay along the clear, easy-flowing Mo- 
selle, whose banks, terraced high up at great expense, grow 
very choice grapes. There is nothing poetical about a vine- 
yard in these districts. There may be where the vines are 
trellised and overrun arbors, with the dark eyes of laughing 
maidens peeping out from among the leaves ; but a vine four 
feet high tied to a pole a foot higher than itself is not a 
specially pretty thing, either singly or by millions, and alto- 
gether less satisfactory to the aesthetic sense than a field of 
hops or Indian corn. 

Coblentz lies pleasantly at the union of the Moselle with 
the Rhine. We lunched here, and drove across the bridge of 
boats and up to the platform of the old castle of Ehrenbreit- 



204 Cologne. 

stein, perched on a precipitous rock nearly 400 feet above the 
Rhine. This castle is a disappointment to me. presenting now 
only the long line of a modern fortification built on the scarcely 
visible ruins of the grim old fortress which once frowned on 
the smiling valley below. 

At 2 P.M. took the express steamboat down the Rhine, 
but as it is our intention to ascend the river soon, I will defer 
writing my impressions until then. We reached Cologne at 
6 P.M. and found excellent accommodations in the fine Hotel 
du Nord. This city has filled an important place in history 
from a very early time, and was founded by the tribes of the 
Ubii 38 B.C., when driven by the Romans from the right to 
the left bank of the Rhine, about one hundred and fifty miles 
above Rotterdam. In a.d. 51 Agrippina, the mother of Nero, 
established a colony of Roman veterans here and named the 
settlement Colonia Agrippina. She was born here, and 
Vitellius and Trajan were proclaimed emperors here. In 310 
Constantine built a bridge over the Rhine here, afterward de- 
stroyed by the Normans ; and his mother, St. Helena, founded 
the Church of St. Gereon. In 355 it was devastated by the 
Franks. Their kings, Dagobert and Pepin, resided here, and 
the wife of the latter founded the Church of St. Maria im 
Capitol. Charlemagne had a palace here. Then follows a 
long and dreary record of internal strife and outside wars, 
but the city prospered in spite of them, and at the end of the 
fifteenth century was one of the richest and most prosperous 
towns in Germany, with a commerce extending to all parts of 
the known world. Its Easter fairs were famous, it had great 
warehouses in London, the arts flourished, and in science and 
letters it could boast of Duns Scotus, Albertus Magnus and 
Thomas Aquinas, and many a famous painter and architect. 
Its prosperity waned through the change in the channels of 
trade consequent on the discovery of America, by the revolu- 
tion caused by the Reformation, by the Thirty Years' War, 
and lastly by its occupation by the French in 1794, when it 
lost its independence and was plundered to such an extent 
that of its one hundred and thirty-seven churches and chapels 
only thirty were spared, and its population in 1807 had 
dwindled to 42,000. But after the overthrow of Napoleon 
and its annexation to Prussia, it again exhibited its strenuous 
vitality, and has grown with astonishing rapidity into a hand- 



Cologne Cathedral. 205 

some, mostly modern town of nearly 200,000 inhabitants, the 
third largest city in Prussia and the sixth largest in Germany. 
Indeed, I have scarcely visited a city of finer buildings in 
its extensive modern parts. 

The crowning architectural glor}^ of Cologne, and, indeed, 
of all this mighty German land, so rich in architecture, is its 
great Cathedral, completed in 18S0 — six hundred and thirty- 
two years after the laying of the first stone. The history of 
this magnificent Gothic structure is very interesting, and I 
make a resume of it from an interesting pamphlet I find here, 
compiled by F. T. Helmken, of this city. It stands on an 
artificial mound raised by the ruins of buildings dating from 
the Roman period, on the spot where stood the Capitol, 
the Forum and the Temple of Mercury. A church dedicated 
to St. Peter stood here in the time of Charlemagne. But 
when the relics of the Magi were brought from Milan to 
Cologne in 1163, pilgrims flocked to worship them to such an 
extent from all parts of Europe that it was decided to build 
them a more worthy shrine, and the foundation-stone of the 
present Cathedral was laid with great pomp on August 15th, 
1248. There is a doubt about the name of the architect who 
prepared the designs, but it seems to have been a certain 
Gerard, the superintendent of the building of the choir. This 
part was carried on by his successor, Arnold, and completed by 
Arnold's son in 1330. In the year 1347 the walls of the south 
nave and south tower were begun, but hindered by feuds and 
strife, so that the work only went on by piecemeal until 1560, 
when it ceased altogether, and the structure remained in a ruin- 
ously unfinished state until 1833, when, at the instance of King 
Frederick William III. of Prussia, a subsidy was granted to 
restore the parts damaged by time, and gradually the enthu- 
siasm of the German people became kindled toward its restora- 
tion, rulers of the various German states, societies and public- 
spirited individuals interested themselves, abundant means 
were supplied, and in 1842 the foundation-stone for its con- 
tinuance was solemnly consecrated by Archbishop John of 
Geissel and laid in place by the king, in the presence of an 
illustrious assemblage of princes, bishops and noblemen. In 
the course of his speech on the occasion the King said : 

" This is the work of fraternal affection among all Ger- 
mans, all confessions. When I reflect on this fact, my eyes 



206 The Cathedral a Miracle of Art, 

fill with tears of joy, and I thank God for having permitted 
me to see this day. Here, where this stone is being laid, 
hand in hand with yon towers, the finest gates in the world 
shall arise. Germany is building them, and may they, by the 
grace of God, be the portals through which Germany shall 
enter upon new, grand and good times." 

I cannot trace the steps in this interesting story ; how 
this miracle of grace and grandeur grew, as the forests grow, 
to its completion, until now it stands the most perfect Gothic 
structure, it is said, in all the world. The entire sum expended 
between 1842 and 1880 amounted to upward of nine hundred 
thousand pounds. It is a curious fact that a part of this vast 
sum was raised by a lottery. A huge crane which was taken 
down from the unfinished south tower in 1868 had stood there 
for four hundred years. The whole was completed according 
to the original designs, and in glass cases in one of the chapels 
are preserved two parts of these designs, supposed to be lost, one 
of which was found in Paris in 1816 ; one portion of another 
at Darmstadt in 1814, and the remaining portion of this also, in 
Paris, in 1816. No wonder devout souls looked upon their acci- 
dental recovery as a signal act of Divine Providence. It is 
vain for me to attempt a description of this noble edifice. 
I will content myself with copying the bald figures of its 
enormous dimensions. Unlike those cathedrals which were 
begun in the early Norman style and during centuries con- 
tinued to grow under different architects, who used plans 
modified by the changing styles, until, when completed, they 
show parts expressive of each, this one is pure Gothic of the 
best period. It is built in the form of a cross, mostly of 
gray sandstone from the Drachenfels. The nave is flanked 
with double, the transept with single aisles. The total length is 
444 feet ; breadth, 201 feet ; length of transept, 282 feet ; height 
of the walls, 150 feet; of the roof, 201 feet; of the towers, 
512 feet — the loftiest church-towers in Europe. The prin- 
cipal portal between the towers is 93 feet high and 31 feet wide. 
The interior is borne by fifty-six enormous pillars, and its area 
is 7400 square yards. Meagre and cold are the figures which 
seek to convey some idea of the dimensions of this miracle of 
art, this wonder of man's conception and execution, but colder 
still must be the human soul that does not feel moved and 
exalted by its sublimity and beauty. It is something as if 



The Bones of the Magi. 207 

one should find himself in a noble forest where everything 
incongruous and trivial had been permitted to perish ; so 
that only the huge trunks of lofty trees in the utm'ost of per- 
fection of branch and leafage, as they stood in towering, 
overhanging and interlacing boughs, had been touched by 
an angel's finger and turned to enduring stone. As the 
afternoon sun enters through countless windows, its light 
broken into all rich colors by glass wrought into holy forms 
of saints and confessors, archangels and the diviner forms 
of the Son of God and his virgin Mother, this bewildering 
light gleaming everywhere, intercepted only by perfect forms 
of pillars and tracery, far as the eye can reach, in a space 
so vast that he feels himself a mere atom : there is it re- 
vealed to the mind of man how nearly the truest art is allied 
to worship, and how veritably this vast and awful cathedral 
is a temple of the Most High, albeit made with hands. 

In one of the chapels of the choir is the famous painting 
called the Dombild, a large winged picture by Stephen Lochner, 
representing the " Adoration of the Magi," said to be the best 
painting of the early German school, and, as it seems to me, 
a fine work. Speaking of the Magi, there is something very 
interesting, if one thinks upon it, of the part the " Bones of 
the Magi," or three wise men, Gaspar, Melchior, and Bal- 
thazar, who are reputed to be they who came from the East 
to worship the Infant Christ at Bethlehem, have played in the 
history of Cologne. They are said to have been brought to 
Constantinople by the Empress Helena, and afterward taken 
to Milan in the year 324, and in 1164 presented by Frederick 
Barbarossa to Archbishop Reinald von Dassel, who removed 
them to Cologne. The fame acquired by the city as the pos- 
sessor of these holy relics is said to have greatly increased its 
prosperity, and the idea of the present Cathedral was con- 
ceived by Archbishop Engelbert to give a proper shrine for 
these illustrious remains ; and in the Treasury of the Cathe- 
dral, among many rich and interesting articles, they are now 
enshrined in a costly reliquary of beautiful workmanship made 
in 1 190 ; a silver shrine, 6 feet long, 3^ feet wide, and 4^ feet 
high, gilded with pure gold and set with precious stones. In 
the lower portion of this shrine it is pretended that these 
bones now rest, and in the upper portion those of Sts. Na- 
bor, and Gregory of Spoleto, whoever these last may be — a 



308 The CathedraVs Relics. —Its Peal of Bells. 

strange belief, or pretence of belief, to have lasted so firmly 
and actively from an early period in the spread of Christian- 
ity. The'remains of St. Engelbert, the canonized archbishop, 
are also enshrined here in a large, costly reliquary, wrought 
in this city in 1663, of solid silver gilt with gold ; a magnifi- 
cent example of goldsmith's work, weighing one hundred and 
sixty-seven pounds. The upper portion of St. Peter's staff is 
also shown, consisting of an ivory knob resting on twelve 
inches of old hollow brass, such as might serve for a cane- 
handle. That I might correctly understand, I asked the sacris- 
tan if it formed a part of the staff St. Peter the Apostle 
used to carry. He said, " Certainly ; do you not see how old 
and black the ivory is ?" By the miraculous power inherent 
in it, St. Maternas, the first bishop of Cologne, is said to have 
been raised to life forty days after his death. There is also a 
rich Gothic reliquary of the fifteenth century containing two 
links of the chain of St. Peter — that is, of the chain with 
which he was bound in prison at Rome. There is also in the 
Treasury great store of crucifixes, croziers, staffs, monstrances, 
mitres, and so on, of prodigious intrinsic value, in gold and 
precious stones and ivory wrought with wonderful skill, all 
being presents from mighty dignitaries in Church and State 
during many centuries. 

In the third story of the south tower hangs the peal of bells, 
five in number. The largest of these, the "Emperor's Bell" 
(Gloriosa), cast in 1875, weighs twenty-seven tons, the largest 
and heaviest bell in Europe, the bell of Toulouse coming next, 
then the bell of St. Stephen's Tower in Vienna, then Big Ben 
of Westminster. The tongue or hammer is eleven feet long 
and weighs sixteen hundred pounds, and requires the force of 
twenty-eight men to strike it. This bell was cast from cannon 
taken from the French in the Franco-Prussian war, and bears, 
among other inscriptions in German, the following as it is 

translated : 

" I'm called the Emperor's bell, 
The Emperor's praise I tell. 
On holy guard I stand, 
And for the German land 
Beseech that God may please 
To grant it peace and ease." 

In the Gurzenich, built in 1440 by the city as a house in 



Churches of St. Gereon, St. Maria im Capitol and St. Ursula. 209 

which to entertain distinguished guests, is a noble banqueting 
hall 174 feet long by 72 feet wide, with a gallery, whose lofty 
ceiling of carved oak is sustained by twenty-two finely carved 
wooden pillars. 

The Church of St. Gereon is interesting in several respects. 
The original structure was circular and of Roman origin, 
having been built by the Empress Helena, mother of Constan- 
tine the Great, and later changes have converted this portion 
into a decagonal nave 153 feet high, with a groined vault. 
This church is dedicated to St. Gereon, who with three hundred 
and eighteen Christian soldiers is said to have suffered death 
here during the persecution of the Christians under Diocletian. 
Stone sarcophagi arranged around a gallery along the chapels 
surrounding the nave are said to contain the bones of these 
martyrs, whose skulls are set in rows under gilded arabesques 
about the choir. 

The Church of St. Maria im Capitol, consecrated in 1049 by 
Pope Leo X., has an ambulatory around the semicircular ends 
of the choir and transepts, giving the east end a trefoil shape. 
The original structure is said to have been founded by Plec- 
trudis, wife of Pepin of Heristal and mother of Charles 
Martel. Her tomb, with a recumbent effigy of well-carved 
stone, in excellent preservation, and dating from the twelfth 
century, is in the large and handsome crypt sometimes used 
as a place of worship. 

There is a Romish legend that an English princess named 
Ursula, on her return from Rome, whither she had gone on a 
pilgrimage, was intercepted here by the Huns, and with eleven 
thousand virgins of her train barbarously murdered. She 
was canonized, and we visited the old Church of St. Ursula, 
where thousands of bones, said to be those of these spotless 
maidens, are arranged in open cases, in all sorts of fantastic 
patterns, in the neatest and strangest way. Great stone 
coffins stand ranged about the chapels, said to be full of the 
same osseous fragments, while row upon row of smooth brown 
skulls are arranged on shelves, each dressed in a wide 
embroidered band, the work of generations of pious nuns. 
The priest who showed them, in answer to my question said 
they had recovered all the bones of the whole eleven thousand, 
including those of Ursula herself, which are choicely kept in 
a costly reliquary in the Treasury, only the skeleton of the 
14 



310 Aix-la-Chapelle and its Cathedral. 

right foot and an arm-bone mounted in silver being shown in 
separate shrines. Herein, too, is matter for reflection, if one 
will consider it. I should add that the burial-place of these 
martyrs was indicated by a dove, whose figure is shown in 
many places in the church, in painting and sculpture. 

We ran down to Aix-la-Chapelle — German, Aachen — by rail, 
forty-four miles, over a broad, fertile plain — passing through 
Stolberg, a very important manufacturing town of ii,ooo 
population, founded by French Protestant refugees who set 
up foundries here in the seventeenth century — and went directly 
to the Cathedral, an interesting structure of two distinct parts, 
in different styles of architecture ; one, built by Charlemagne 
lin 800, in the Byzantine style, in octagon form, copied from 
■St. Vitale in Ravenna, the remaining portion in the Gothic 
'.styles of different periods. The interior of the original octagon 
is supported by eight great columns, the upper story being 
relieved by a double row of pillars, some of marble brought 
from Rome, Treves, and Ravenna. Napoleon carried the 
marble ones to Paris in 1794, but they were restored in 1815. 
In the dome is a huge mosaic on a gold ground, and below 
hangs an enormous circular candelabrum of gilded iron, pre- 
sented by Frederick Barbarossa in 1168. There stands in the 
choir a reading-desk of great beauty cast in copper in the 
fifteenth century — an eagle, said to be of Roman work, on a 
copper stand. The pulpit, richly carved and stuck with 
precious stones and carved ivory, is a present from Henry II. 
of Germany in the year 1000. From it St. Bernard preached 
the second Crusade. In the gallery of the octagon stands a 
settle or chair made of marble slabs joined with iron clamps, 
a rude piece of furniture, in which, as the story is, Charle- 
magne was found seated in his tomb when it was opened by 
Otho III. in the year 1000, dressed in his imperial robes, bearing 
the insignia of the empire, his sword by his side, on his knees 
a copy of the Evangels bound in gold, and on his head a 
fragment of the Holy Cross. Frederick Barbarossa opened 
the tomb a second time in 1 164 and put the remains in a beau- 
tiful, well-preserved Roman sarcophagus of Parian marble 
with the " Rape of Proserpine" finely cut in relief on the 
.sides, and placed it in the gallery where it now stands. The 
chair was used for the coronation of the emperors. 

This city was a favorite residence of Charlemagne, who 



The Cathedral Treasury. 211 

raised it to the second city of his empire, and died here 
in 814. All the German emperors from his time down to 1531 
were crowned here, and it was specially designated the Free 
City of the Holy Koman Empire and Seat of Royalty. The 
insignia of the Empire were kept here until 1793, when they 
were transferred to the Imperial Treasury at Vienna. Many 
important treaties of peace have been concluded here, among 
them that of 1668 between Louis XIV. and Spain. It now has 
a population of 95,000 and is as modern a city as possible, with 
almost no remains of mediaeval times except its churches, 
and is mainly, I should say, a dull and uninteresting town. 

When one considers the wealth of the Cathedral Treasury 
in relics, one is not surprised to be informed, as I am by a 
curious little pamphlet sold me by a sacristan who made a 
great show of doing it stealthily, that during several centu- 
ries, beginning with the eleventh, pilgrims flocked here in 
prodigious numbers to witness the exposition of these relics, 
so that my veracious description states that in one day, in the 
year 1496, only four years after America became known to the 
world, one hundred and forty-two thousand were gathered in 
and about the cit)^ Indeed, there seems to have been a sharp 
rivalry between Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne as to whose pros- 
perity should be most enhanced through the possession of rel- 
ics superior in number and sanctity. The tide of popularity, 
gifts from rich pilgrims and the "offering-penny" from the 
poor, flowed to one and the other of these cities and cathedrals, 
according to the alternate rumors of new miracle-working 
relics acquired by each ; and as the rivalry went on an enor- 
mous number were aggregated in the treasuries of their cathe- 
drals, and their accumulation from time to time, to counteract 
each other's successful acquisitions, must have greatly taxed 
the ingenuity of the pious ecclesiastics charged with the duty 
of enhancing the revenues of their respective churches. The 
strange and wonderful subject of sacred relics and miracles 
has here in this state of things a lively and striking illustra- 
tion. I have given a list of a few exhibited in Cologne. I 
copy at some length from the authenticated list of those in 
Aix-la-Chapelle. 

In the Treasury of the Cathedral, in a great shrine of the 
thirteenth century, adorned with twelve hundred precious 
stones, are the "superior" or, as popularly known, "great " 



312 The Treasury's Relics. 

relics. These were during many centuries shown only once in 
seven years, except to crowned heads, on their special demand. 
They are : 

The yellow white garment of the mother of our Lord. 

The swathing-clothes of our Saviour. 

The cloth in which was laid the body of St. John the Bap- 
tist after his decapitation. 

The cloth which our Saviour wore around his loins in the 
dreadful hour of his death for our salvation. 

Besides these is a long list of the inferior relics, from which 
I select only a few : 

The woven linen girdle of the holy Virgin, in a reliquary 

of the fourteenth century. 
The girdle of Jesus, made of leather, in a precious vessel 

of the fourteenth century. 
Part of the rope with which our Saviour was tied in his 

passion, in a vessel of the fifteenth century. 

Joined in a reliquary : 

A fragment of the sponge that served to refresh our dying 

Lord upon the cross. 
A particle of the holy cross. 
Some hair of the Apostle St. Bartholomew. 
A bone of Zachary, father to St. John the Baptist. 
Two teeth of the Apostle St. Thomas. 

In a shrine, richly enamelled and adorned with pearls and 
precious stones, given by Philip IL, King of Spain : 

A fragment of the reed that served to make a mock of 

our Saviour. 
A part of the linen cloth which was spread over the holy 

face of our Lord in the grave. 
Some hair of St. John the Baptist. 
A rib of the first martyr, St. Stephen. 
A golden cross of Charlemagne, containing a particle of 

the holy cross. 
A statue of St. Peter the Apostle, showing in his hand a 

ring from the chain with which this man of God, who 

had suffered so many persecutions and trials, was 

chained in the prison. 



Other Relics Elseivhere. 213 

A vessel containing little pieces of the bones of the twelve 

apostles. 
A silver vessel containing bones of St. John the Baptist 

and of St. Nicolas. 

Also in the Church of St. Adalbert here : 

A shoulder-bone and a leg-bone of St. Mary Magdalen. 
Two small particles of the sponge with which our Lord 

was refreshed upon the cross. 
A fragment of the crib in which our Lord was laid at his 

birth. 

Also in the parish Church of St. John the Baptist near the 
city : 

A cross containing two particles of the holy cross, 
particles of the clothes of Jesus Christ, of the pillar and 
the whip serving at the scourging of our Lord, of the 
garment of the Holy Virgin and bones of St. Paul and 
St. James the younger, and finally a particle of the rod 
of Aaron and Moses. 

In a small vial some blood of St. John the Baptist. 

A particle of the bones of the innocent children. 

Also in the Free Abbey of Cornelimuenster : 

The linen cloth with which our Saviour girded himself 

and dried his disciples' feet at the Lord's Supper. 
A large piece of the cloth that covered the Lord's face 

while in the grave. 

The reason for this vast accumulation of relics as seen by us 
here is plainly to advance the prosperity of these two cities 
and aid in building their cathedrals, and is it not fully prob- 
able that they were invented and named and sanctified by the 
Church to further these ends? Could their motives have 
been honest ? Were they sincere ? How far at this time can 
these questions be answered ? Certainly all the civilized world 
easily believed in them for centuries, as do devout Catholics 
now, and came to reverence and to worship. Nor in these 
very years were our English ancestors at all behind in relic- 
worship, for the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor in West- 
minster Abbey contained a no less holy relic than the crystal- 
line vessel of our Saviour's blood. This precious relic was 
presented to King Edward, and is thus mentioned by Brayley 



214 The Drachenfels. 

in his history of the Abbey : " In 1247, on the day of the trans- 
lation of Edward the Confessor, a vessel of blood which in the 
preceding year had been sent to the king by the Knights 
Templars and Hospitallers in the Holy Land, and was attested 
by Robert the Patriarch of Jerusalem to have trickled from 
our Saviour's wounds at the time of his crucifixion, was pre- 
sented with great ceremony to this church," and conveyed in 
solemn procession by King Henry III in his own hands on 
foot from St. Paul's to the Abbey. The Bishop of Norwich 
that same day preached before the king in commendation of 
the relic, furnished the proofs of its genuineness, and the bish- 
ops there present pronounced one year and one hundred and 
sixteen days' pardon to all who should come and reverence it. 
Besides this vessel there was in this shrine, the stone marked 
by the impression of Christ's foot at his Ascension, a thorn 
of Christ's crown and a large piece of the true cross. 

Returned to Cologne, and September 27th, at 7.30 a.m., took 
steamboat up the Rhine as far as Bingen, where we left the 
boat and passed the night at the Victoria Hotel. We had 
already descended the river by boat from Coblentz, sixty 
miles. For the first twenty miles between Cologne and Bonn 
the scenery along the river has only the interest belonging to 
a fiat, well-cultivated region. At Bonn the banks rise in 
gently sloping hills, growing more and more abrupt, the river 
narrows, and soon the bold crag of the Drachenfels with its 
picturesque ruined castle rises on our left 900 feet above the 
river, all the circumstances agreeing to make an impressive 
picture. The Seven Mountains, being seven peaks of volcanic 
origin, rise grandly from the long range of which the Drachen- 
fels is the head. The view up and backward on either hand 
unites beauty and a tender grandeur well portrayed by Byron 
with his masterly touch : 

"The castled crag of Drachenfels 

Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine, 
Whose breast of waters broadly swells 

Between the banks which bear the vine, 
And hills all rich with blossomed trees 

And fields which promise corn and wine, 
And scatter'd cities crowning these 

Whose far white walls along them shine." 

Only now the tints of autumn are on the trees, and the prom- 



The Famous Vineyards of the Rhine. 215 

ise of the vine is realized in the ripened clusters. One might 
feel disappointed in the Rhine who should not see it above 
Coblentz, but certainly not above that city, where it is lessened 
by the very considerable volume of the Moselle, and as far up 
as Bingen flows in many windings between lofty banks, pre- 
cipitous in many places, abruptly sloping elsewhere, often 
intersected by narrow and dark ravines, bearing terrace upon 
terrace of vines, bright with the white walls of many an ancient 
village with its quaint towers and spires, lifted into the 
region of poetry by its ruined castle frowning down upon it, 
as if still affording a haughty protection ; and mediaeval strong- 
holds whose names abound in a wide realm of tradition and 
song and story. Stolzenfels, Marksburg, Sterrenberg, Lieben- 
stein, Deurenburg, Rheinfels, Schonburg, Gutenfels, Stahleck, 
Furstenberg, Nollich, Hoheneck, Sooneck, Falkenburg, Rhein- 
stein, Ehrenfels, Mouse Tower, who is not more or less 
familiar with these from his boyhood ? Very notable, won- 
derfully fair, were all these to me, seen in the hazy light 
of this September afternoon, the breath of Autumn in the air, 
and her many-hued mantle flung wide over all the stately 
landscape, as the boat passed slowly up the strong brown 
current of the classic Rhine. 

At Bingen the river suddenly expands, its southern bank 
quickly sinks into the level of a broad plain, only at infre- 
quent intervals presenting a rounded elevation of no especial 
interest. On the other hand, the bank slopes roundly up to 
the southern sun, and for the next twelve miles, with the 
special name of the Reingau, contains the famous vineyards 
of the Rhine in this order as we ascend the river : Rlides- 
heim, Geisenheim, Schloss Johannisberg, Marcobrunner, Stein- 
berg. These vineyards are small in extent. That of Schloss 
Johannisberg consists of forty acres, in perfect cultivation, lying 
about the old yellow chateau standing on a rounded knoll, the 
site of an old Benedictine monastery. It is the property of 
Prince Richard Metternich, who once a year sells the product in 
the cask at auction on the premises. Near b)'' are vineyards 
yielding the Johannisberg Klaus, next in value to the true Jo- 
hannisberg, and besides there are vineyards about the village of 
Johannisberg, whose vintage is called by the general name 
of Johannisberger. These last are the wines we get in New 
York and other cities at home, when we get an3'thing at 



216 Bingen. — German National Monument. 

all entitled to be called genuine. The Steinberg vineyard, 
sixty acres in extent, belongs to the government and is 
esteemed equally precious with the Schloss Johannisberg. It 
belonged to the rich Cistercian Abbey of Eberbach, seen 
dimly, by the aid of a glass, nestled in a narrow valley two 
miles away, and for more than six hundred years the good 
monks tended these precious vines, whose produce is also sold 
at auction every spring, the sale attracting the great wine 
merchants of a wide region. It is easy to see how limited is 
the quantity of these famous wines and what a prodigious 
amount of the ordinary wine of the country is bottled and 
sold under their titles. 

The village of Bingen lies pleasantly on the sloping south- 
ern bank, and is picturesque and quaint with its surviving 
towers and bits of ancient wall. Very naturally would the 
" soldier of the Legion" who, in Mrs. Norton's fine poem, 
" lay dying in Algiers," turn his longing heart to his birth- 
place in " Bingen, fair Bingen on the Rhine." Just opposite, 
on the crest of a fair eminence, rises the great German 
National Monument, raised to perpetuate the rising of the 
German people and the foundation of the German Empire in 
1870. The base is 78 feet high, and the grand figure of Ger- 
mania with her sublime and serene and beautiful face, looking 
across the river, rises from it to the height of more than 30 feet. 

The fifty-nine miles of river from Bingen to Mayence has 
little to interest, and we do no more in this latter city than 
visit an interesting museum of Roman and mediaeval antiqui- 
ties, the Cathedral, the house where Gutenberg was born, 
another where he set up the first printing-office ever known, 
and his noble statue in one of the squares, designed by Thor- 
waldsen, and by the afternoon train come to Heidelberg, a 
somewhat weary party, to find good welcome, and a grate- 
ful fire in the tall German stove, in pleasant rooms of the 
Hotel de I'Europe, where we propose to rest quietly over 
Sunday. 

September 30. — Yesterday was a decidedly stormy day and, 
with its unseasonable cold, quite the worst we have encoun- 
tered since leaving home, where we should call the weather of 
the last few days a magnified equinoctial storm ; but we feed 
the odd stove with sound beech-wood, read the packet of 
letters from home awaiting us here, and succeed very well in 



Heidelberg Castle. — The Great Tun. 217 

creating something of a home atmosphere in the heart of this 
old foreign city. To-day brings some improvement in the 
weather, and we have used it in a long visit to the Castle, the 
most famous in all the German land. The Castle or Chateau 
of Heidelberg is a fortified residence of huge extent, stand- 
ing, a well-preserved ruin, on a wooded point projecting from 
the abrupt range of the Konigsstuhl, which ends precipitously 
at the Neckar, just above the city, on which it looks down 
from the height of more than 300 feet. The oldest part was 
built by the Count Palatine Rudolph I. in 1294, was extended 
by several successors and strongly fortified, and in the six- 
teenth century palatial parts were added by several of the 
Electors who resided in it, among them Frederick V., King of 
Bohemia, who married Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of 
England. It stood intact until after its capitulation to Count 
Melac, a French general, in the war Louis XIV. was waging 
against the Rhenish Palatinate, who dismantled it, destroyed 
its fortifications, and tried with only partial success to blow it 
up with gunpowder, leaving it a magnificent ruin of vast ex- 
tent. It covered with its outer enclosures some forty acres, 
and its towers and the long line of palatial walls of red sand- 
stone, richly carved and embellished with many heroic effigies 
of valiant mediaeval knights and warriors of renown, its great 
halls, all desolate now, where feasting and revelry went on in 
royal fashion, its huge kitchens with hearths so prodigious 
that whole oxen were easily roasted below the enormous fun- 
nelled chimneys, its arched cellars below stored with wines, 
its halls of audience, its throne-room, its armory, its defen- 
sive walls, twenty feet thick, its deep moat, supplied from a 
reservoir up among the hills, its battlemented gates, all attest 
the strength and extent of this palatial fortress, and bring 
back the romance of the middle ages more vividly than the 
pictured pages of Froissart or Scott. Ivy festoons its outer 
walls and long weeds flaunt from its lonely battlements. Still, 
it is not to me so picturesque nor striking as several of those 
ruder keeps perched on the crags of the Rhine nor so impres- 
sive as Stirling Castle, which realized to my mind the ideal of 
a structure of this kind. In the cellar stands, sound and 
good, the great tun or cask, 30 by 25 feet, capable of holding 
forty-nine thousand gallons of wine — or rather it does not 
stand, but lies on huge beams, as it has done since 175 1, when 



218 The Heidelberg Wines. — Wiirzburg. 

it was built to take the place of one made by Charles Philip 
in 1728, it in turn supplying the place of one built by Charles 
Lewis in 1662, and this succeeding the first one constructed 
by the Count Palatine Casimir in 1591. Huge as it is, it has 
frequently been filled, but not in these later years. There 
stands near it a wooden figure, in the style of a tobacco-shop 
sign, of Perkeo, court-jester of Elector Charles Philip, and 
fastened to the wall beside him a merry jest of his contriv- 
ance — one rings a bell, the handle of which depends from 
the bottom of a cupboard, the door of which flies open and 
a fox-tail is whisked into one's face — a bit of facetious coarse- 
ness worthy of a court-fool. 

Heidelberg is a pleasant little city of nearly 30,000 souls, 
about one-quarter Catholic, and is crowded between the moun- 
tain-range on which the castle stands and the Neckar, a con- 
siderable stream, joining the Rhine some fifteen miles below, 
with sunny banks which furnish the Hock wines. I am told 
that the wines made into " sparkling" Hock and Moselle are 
usually of an inferior sort. There are factories at several 
points for manufacturing the sparkling German wines. The 
university here is the chief light of Southern Germany, and 
celebrated its five hundredth anniversary in 1886, It boasts 
of nearly one thousand students. The buildings are plain 
and simple, and the students' rooms mean, bare and dirty to 
an astonishing degree, but there is a fine new hall, which we 
were kindly permitted to see, together with other parts, al- 
though the winter semester is not yet begun. 

October i. — Left Heidelberg for Nuremberg at 8.30 a.m. 
by rail, following the windings of the turbid Neckar for two 
hours, its steep wooded banks glowing in the dyes of autumn 
and fringed with narrow margins of verdurous meadows and 
beset with many a brown old village overlooked by its ruined 
stronghold ; a continuously pleasing scene in the grateful sun- 
light. Leaving the valley of the Neckar, the road crosses to 
that of the Main, and at Wurzburg, a distance of one hun- 
dred miles, we lunch at the Russischer Hof, and give three 
hours to this very ancient and interesting city of 55,000 inhab- 
itants, about one sixth of whom are Protestants. The capital 
of the district of Lower Franconia, it was formerly the seat of 
a prince-bishop and has been under ecclesiastical rule almost 
from its foundation. Its first bishop, Burcardus, was conse- 



The Rtyyal Palace.— Walther von dcr Vogelweide. 219 

crated by St. Boniface in 741, and from that time until incor- 
porated with Bavaria in 1803 it was ruled by an unbroken line 
of eighty-two bishops, who were made Dukes of Franconia in 
1 1 20. This well illustrates the kind of government these 
cities and adjacent regions, from Cologne up the course of the 
Rhine, were subject to until the power of Rome was broken 
by the Reformation. Haughty prelates lorded it over all this 
land, putting on armor oftener than the cassock, and wielding 
a mightier sway than mere secular princes were able to do. 
In the old Cathedral here stands a double row of them in well- 
wrought effigies of stone, and this cold material scarcely 
suffices for the arrogance and pride in which they stare for- 
ever from above the worn brasses whereon their praises are 
sounded in lying eulogy. At least one should be excepted ; 
the good Bisho'p Echter von Mespelbrunn, who in the latter 
part of the sixteenth century founded a great hospital, whose 
extensive buildings we visited, where six hundred persons are 
fed and lodged and tended, the property belonging to it hav- 
ing an estimated value of four hundred and fifty thousand 
pounds. 

We took a peep at the Royal Palace, one of the residences of 
the King of Bavaria, built in the style of the Palace of Ver- 
sailles, with an imposing front of five hundred feet, a great 
stone staircase, a gaudy chapel, a theatre, and two hundred 
and eighty rooms, many richly furnished. And this is only 
one of the residences of a king of a nation unable to stand 
alone and forming only a component part of the German Em- 
pire ! The cellars are said to be the most spacious in Ger- 
many, and to have in them some two hundred casks of good 
wine from the royal vineyards. 

Near the Cathedral is a small ancient church, several times 
restored in its different parts, with cloisters now effaced, in 
one of which the famous mediaeval Minnesinger or minstrel, 
Walther von der Vogelweide, was buried in 1230. There is a 
tablet to his memory on the exterior wall of the choir, erected 
in 1848, with inscriptions, and at the top a carved nest of 
young birds in act of being fed. The minstrel, as the story is, 
left a sum of money to be used for all time to feed the birds, 
but soon the priests attached to the church appropriated it, 
and it was seen no more. May the malison of all good sing- 
ers rest heavily on their memory ! 



230 Nuremberg. 

There is a fine old bridge over the Main, 650 feet long, built 
in 1474, with rows of saintly stone statues of heroic size on 
either parapet. The city has many interesting ancient build- 
ings ; a Rathhaus with a fine old square tower, and a ruined 
castle on a crag above the river, now restored and occupied 
as a citadel, and is altogether a town of attractions. But we 
hurry on at 5 p.m. to Nuremberg, where we have taught our- 
selves to expect the perfect expression of the mediaeval period, 
and reaching it at 7 p.m. after dark, see, for a beginning, a 
horse railroad in the light of glaring electric lamps on poles 
thirty feet high. Only these we note on the way to the com- 
fortable Bavarian Hotel, where we await the morrow. 

October 2. — We awake to find ourselves in a huge, rambling 
hotel consisting of several connecting houses, one side running 
along the Pegnitz, which flows midway of the city, with two 
courts enclosed, overhung by old balconies, the whole dating 
from the fifteenth century. Its long, winding passages, 
numerous stairways and irregular rooms and general monastic 
air prepare one for antiquity outside. 

Nuremberg, or Niirnberg, as the Germans spell and pro- 
nounce it, has a population of 114,000, and until 1806 was an 
independent imperial town, but has since belonged to Bavaria. 
It dates back to the early part of the eleventh century, when 
its castle was begun by the Emperor Conrad II., extended by 
Frederick Barbarossa in 1158, and fitted up as a royal resi- 
dence in 1854 in the Gothic style. The city grew to great 
prosperity, in spite of the feuds, dissensions and frequent 
change of rulers common to all towns through the dreary 
middle ages, and in the beginning of the sixteenth century 
ranked next to Augsburg as the chief seat of trade between Ger- 
many, Venice and the East. Its citizens were rich and liberal, 
and built fine private residences in the best style of the times, 
and lavished their wealth in embellishing them. By a happy 
coincidence, there arose here at this period artists whose lives 
were given to beautifying the city in their respective provinces 
of art — Adam Krafft in sculpture, Veit Stoss in wood-carving, 
Peter Vischer and his sons, the brass-founders, Ludwig Krug 
and Peter Flotner, the die-cutters, the goldsmiths Wengel Jan- 
nitzer and Valentin Maler. Here lived and wrought the great 
painter Albrecht Diirer, and here the merry cobbler Hans Sachs 
sang his joyful songs. All kindly arts flourished in these fos- 



The Walls and Houses of Nuremberg. 221 

taring circumstances of easy opulence, treasures of art accumu- 
lated here, and although the prosperity of the city fell off 
after the new sea-route to India was found, and was abated 
still more by the Thirty Years' War, these treasures continued, 
and the old town stands less changed from its mediaeval state 
by the modern prosperity come to it from its incorporation 
with Bavaria than any city we have visited on this side the 
Atlantic, quaint Bruges perhaps excepted. 

The walls surrounding the early city date from the middle 
ages and are intact, except where they have been opened at 
several points to afford communication with the newer parts 
growing up outside, and with the covered ways extending 
along their tops, interrupted at intervals by noble and pictu- 
resque towers various in form and built with an eye to beauty 
as well as to safety, forming a fitting frame to the lofty, red- 
tiled houses rising from narrow, sinuous streets, topped with 
steep roofs as tall as themselves ; broken from foundation to 
ridge with openings for doors ; and windows, square, round, 
oval, lozenge, ornamented with the quaintest, most fanciful 
and graceful, even when grotesque embellishments of carved 
stone balconies, copings, tiny pent-house sheds rising into tiled 
pinnacles — fifty forms, in short, of curious device, to impart a 
charming variety to the ancient roofs and gables. It seems 
as if each builder exercised his individual taste and invented 
his own peculiar dwelling, making it an expression of his own 
sentiments and character, not even paying regard to the line 
of the street in placing it ; so that the houses stand not in 
rows, but at all sorts of angles to the streets ; and the narrow 
footways are obliged to conform as well as they can, running 
along the front of one, in width scarcely enough for a single 
pedestrian, widening in front of the next, turning a sharp 
angle to a third, and so on, with admirable differences and pic- 
turesqueness, presenting something rare and strange at every 
turn. Time has softened and enriched the grays, reds and 
yellows of walls and roofs, so that viewed from a high point, 
like the platform of the castle, the whole presents a harmoni- 
ous and agreeable picture. 

The castle is one of the most interesting we have seen ; in- 
deed, one's ideal of an antique stronghold is fully realized when 
one stands in the court-yard with square towers and round, con- 
nected by battlemented walls shutting him in — here the low 



232 Nurejiibei'g Castle. — Iiistj^uments of Torture. 

entrance through an iron door which has swung on its worn 
hinges for five hundred years ; there a worn flight of stone steps 
leading down to a half-subterranean chapel, now bare, but in 
perfect preservation, where Christ and the Virgin were wor- 
shipped seven hundred years ago, and on every hand perfect 
remains of ages before the land we live in was even conjec- 
tured to exist. In the centre of this court stands the huge 
trunk of a lime-tree, now well denuded of its branches, but 
still sound and able to show some tufts of foliage, believed to 
have been planted by the fair hand of the Empress Cunigunde, 
wife of Emperor Henry II., in the year looo — a thing probable 
enough when we consider the prodigious age attributed by 
the botanists to the big sequoias of California. In some of the 
ancient rooms are several old tiled German stoves of patterns 
and decoration which make them delightful works of art, and 
from a balcony looking out from the queen's apartments is a 
broad and beautiful view across the great plain to the blue 
Franconian hills and down upon the picturesque city ; its steep, 
dull-red roofs surmounted with a hundred antique domes and 
towers and spires ; on the broad moat, now grown with great 
trees and laid out in little garden-plats ; on odd-shaped little 
parks scattered among the streets, enlivened with noble 
statues of famous men, artists and poets who lived and worked 
here ; and fountains in stone and bronze, works of old art 
and beautiful exceedingly. 

Near one of the towers in the court is a famous well, dug 
down through the solid rock more than 300 feet some centuries 
ago, and still furnishing excellent water. Half way down 
this well begin two opposite subterranean passages, one lead- 
ing to the centre of the city, the other to a point beyond the 
walls. We are shown, in a sort of dungeon of one of the 
towers, a great collection of instruments of torture, comprising 
all sorts needful to agonize and mutilate God's image — long 
pincers with wooden handles to be heated red in the brazier 
standing by and used in tearing away the quivering flesh ; iron 
caps which could be forced into the brain by tightening ; iron 
boots for crushing the leg ; a notched blade fitting into another 
by a hinge for cutting out the tongue ; many forms of thumb- 
screws ; a cradle set with iron nails ; the wheel, the rack — in- 
deed, the walls are hung full of the devilish enginery by 
which their High Mightinesses, lay and ecclesiastical, terror- 



The fiDig frail. 223 

ized and held in abject submission the bodies and souls of the 
toiling masses subject to their tyranny. 

In a gloomy chamber of massive stone, in another tower, 
stands, where it is said to have stood for centuries, an instru- 
ment of death called the Jungfrau— " Young Maiden "—the 
heavy cast iron statue of a girl with smiling face, but opening 
in two ponderous, longitudinal parts, hinged at the back, with 
the concave inner sides of face and breast stuck full of long, 
sharp spikes. The destined victim, who has passed his last 
night on earth in a rough stone crib set in a dark angle of the 
walls, is led before it, the body opens, he is thrust backward, 
still erect, within its dreadful hollow, it resumes its form, the 
iron face smiling in cruel mockery, and there only remains a 
ghastly mass of quivering flesh to be dropped down through 
the trap-door opening below the feet of the statue. One deems 
it incredible that these dreadful instruments could actually have 
been used by man on man, and that an age has ever been when 
so much cruelty and diabolical savagery existed in the world; 
for have I not just seen in the great Gothic church of St. Law- 
rence, whose beautiful and pious walls grew through these same 
centuries at the foot of this stronghold of cruelty ; illumined 
.with windows where saints and angels shine in the many-dyed 
glory of old glass, and rich with rows of holy men in well- 
carven stone, the ciborium or tabernacle for the sacred Host 
by Adam Krafft, under whose patient and pious hands the 
stone figures of it grew to life, amid rarest forms of carven 
flowers, the whole graceful and airy as a dream of the night ? 
And in those same ages can it be that Peter Vischer conse- 
crated thirteen years of devout toil to the wonderful bronze 
tomb wherein, in the Church of St. Sebaldus, are enshrined 
the bones of that holy personage? Was Diirer giving to 
immortal canvas then, the sweet, pitiful face of the Virgin and 
her divine Son ; and could merry Hans Sachs tune a glee- 
ful lay — could all these masterful and tender souls labor here, 
with wails of prisoners moaning on the rack, falling on their 
ears from the castle on the hill ? Strange and incongruous is 
this mingling of the savage and the refined ; this barbarism 
with enlightened art ! 

In the interesting museum of antiquities admirably arranged 
in the halls and cloisters of an old Carthusian monastery, 
among a great store of mediaeval relics, is an ancient guillotine, 



224 An Ancient Guillotine. — Ratisbon. 

which has evidently done service, of the precise pattern used 
in France for capital punishment, except that it lacks the 
plank to which the victim is lashed ; showing plainly, since it is 
not less than three hundred years old by the arrangement of 
the collection, which is most exactly made by learned Ger- 
man antiquarians, that Dr. Guillotin, of the Reign of Terror 
epoch, did not invent the instrument to which he gave 
his name. Perhaps he improved it in some respects, and so 
got the reputation of an inventor ; as Colonel Colt of Hart- 
ford did in the article of the revolver ; a form of which, dating 
back not less than two hundred years, is to be found in many 
collections of old arms I have seen. There is in this museum 
a pistol with seven barrels, all fired by one lock. 

The several bridges over the Pegnitz, of quite individual 
styles, are interesting features of the city — one covered, one 
in imitation of the Ponte Rialto in Venice, one set with 
statues, and among them a suspension foot-bridge built in 1824. 

We part reluctantly from this most interesting city, and at 
7 P.M. take train for Ratisbon — German, Regensburg — a ride 
of two and one-half hours. We passed the night here in the 
Goldenes Kreuz, or Golden Cross Hotel, built more than four 
hundred years ago, having a massive tower, on one side of 
which is a medallion of Don John of Austria, the famous gen- 
eral, a natural son of Charles V., and a pretty girl here, 
Barbara Blumberger. The Emperor lodged at the Golden 
Cross when attending a Diet here in 1546, and Don John fol- 
lowed as one of the consequences in 1547. 

October 5. — We came to this old city of Ratisbon chiefly to 
visit the Walhalla — " Hall of the Chosen" — erected on a hill 
320 feet high, six miles from the town, to which we drove in 
the bright autumn weather, over a pleasant level country, meet- 
ing many peasants on foot carrying huge panniers filled with 
vegetables and fruits, and queer carts drawn by cows harness- 
ed to them by the horns, trudging to market ; with many more 
men, women and children at work gathering the late crops in 
the fields on either hand. The season is advanced, much the 
same as in southern Vermont at this time of year, and 
the forests and patches of woodland, distant and near, show 
pretty nearly the same variety and depth of colors in the fo- 
liage of the oaks, maples, lindens, chestnuts, walnuts and the 
lesser shrubbery. 



The Walhalla. 225 

This Walhalla was designed by the famous architect Klenze 
for King Louis, who founded it in 1830 for a German 
"Temple of Fame," wherein to place the busts of such Ger- 
mans of renown as he should think worthy — a royal conception 
royally carried out at a cost of more than a million pounds 
sterling. The edifice is in the pure Doric style, inclose imita- 
tion of the Parthenon at Athens, built of unpolished gray 
marble, is 246 feet long and 115 feet broad, and surrounded 
by a colonnade of fifty-two fluted columns nearly 60 feet high. 
The interior consists of one vast hall in the Ionic style, light- 
ed from above. The ceiling, richly ornamented and gilded, 
is supported by fourteen painted Walkyries (warrior virgins 
of the ancient German Paradise), the sides and the floor are 
of beautiful marble-mosaic — everything of stone. The most 
eminent German artists were employed in its construction and 
decoration. The Walkyries are by Schwanthaler. The mag- 
nificent marble frieze running all around the hall, depicting the 
life of the Germanic nation from the earliest times to the intro- 
duction of Christianity, is by Wagner, the six beautiful marble 
statues of Victory are by Ranch. In this grand, cold, silent hall 
are one hundred finely executed marble busts arranged along 
the walls, and for them the massive pile was builded. The king 
showed a catholic taste in his choice of candidates for his 
*' Temple of Fame ;" and Frederick Barbarossa, Gutenberg, 
Frederick the Great, Luther, Bliicher and Mozart stare at 
each other with steady eyes of stone across the vast, empty 
spaces. A strange thing under the sun is this shining Greek 
temple standing here in the lonely country-side, dedicated to 
such a purpose ! The views from the porticoes are sublime and 
beautiful, including the winding sweep of the blue Danube 
past the gray walls of towered Ratisbon, its broad shining 
tributary, the Regen, and the dark line of the Bavarian forests 
in the far western horizon. 

There are in Ratisbon some fine mediaeval houses with 
peculiar towers of defence, and a cathedral with long, high 
aisles, like those of Strassburg, and handsome open towers and 
charming old cloisters with richly carved window-frames, and 
floors fully paved with tombstones of canons and patricians of 
the church and city ; but it is a dull and rather gloomy town, 
whose 36,000 inhabitants do not seem to prosper overmuch. 
We had table d'hote dinner in the great musty dining-hall at one 
15 



226 Munich. — The Old Pinakothek. 

o'clock, the German hour, the landlord sitting, in the good old 
way, at the head of his table, as did mine host at Nuremberg, and 
rising and bowing ceremoniously to the guests as they left the 
room. The table manners of the average German seem to fall 
something short of the standard prevailing in other countries. 
A well-dressed, highly respectable and intelligent-looking 
neighbor at table leaned forward so as to bring his face close 
down to his plate, and emptied it into his mouth with both 
knife and fork impartially. Here and elsewhere I observed 
both ladies and gentlemen take toothpicks from the stands 
containing this useful article set all along the tables, and 
beginning after the first course, use them freely and openly ; 
laying them down on the cloth, and resuming them at each 
change of cover. With the dessert, lighted candles were set 
along the tables with alcoholic dips for smokers, who lighted 
up and puffed away regardless of the ladies around them. 

We took train for Munich at 5 p.m., and in four hours were 
enjoying an open wood fire in cheerful rooms in the Four 
Seasons, well fagged with a hard week's work. 

October 6, Sunday. — A cheerless, cold, rainy day, passed 
around the fire and over books. Monday — not much better — 
we passed in the old Pinakothek, a Greek name given to the 
admirable building containing the pictures of the old masters. 
This famous gallery — on the whole the best, I think, we have 
seen — contains some fourteen hundred pictures, arranged 
chronologically and according to schools, with a catalogue, 
which is a model of its kind, giving a few clear items about 
each painter and a description of each picture, translated from 
the German of Dr. Franz v. Reber into English of most 
felicitous expression by Mr. Joseph Thacher Clarke. The 
introduction gives a very interesting account of the sources 
of this collection, and sets forth how, under a succession of 
wise and liberal rulers who spared no pains or money in gather- 
ing paintings from all countries, this great gallery grew during 
three hundred years to its present excellence. The persever- 
ance with which these royal enthusiasts hunted for individual 
works of fame, the diplomacy they used in the pursuit, the 
checks, delays, disappointments and triumphs they experi- 
enced in their acquisitions, and the perils to which these 
treasures were many times exposed by the shifting fortunes 
of war and the rivalries of other royal collectors, make a 



JFor/cs of the Old Masters. 227 

romantic story, but I cannot enter upon it. Let it suffice that 
here they are to-day, royally housed and open without charge 
to all the world. Nor can I undertake to give particulars of 
the treasures on the walls of the twelve great saloons, lighted 
from above, with twenty-four adjoining cabinets. Here 
are eighty-nine pictures of Rubens, including many of the 
finest works of this most fertile master, who exhibits in this 
one collection a prodigious range of imaginative power, 
extending from his awful " Last Judgment" through all grades 
of the savage and the tender, the wild and the graceful, to 
the " Children with Garlands." Many of these are not fully 
pleasing to me, but wonderful richness pervades them all. 
There are many by Rembrandt, but with the exception of his 
" Descent from the Cross" and two or three of his wonderful 
portraits, nothing to be compared with those I have seen 
elsewhere, especially at Amsterdam. There are some fine 
examples of Diirer and a few of Titian, his " Christ Crowned 
with Thorns" and his portrait of Charles V. among them,. 
Here are Raphael's Madonnas, di Tempi and della Tenda, and. 
his "Holy Family" from the House of Canigiani. Here is the 
original of Andrea del Sarto's " Holy Family," of which many 
" repetitions" are to be found elsewhere. But I cannot enlarge.. 
Nearly all the great painters of all lands and times before the 
middle of the last century are represented here. The charm,, 
and perfection of the collection to me, however, are not so 
much in the merit of particular pictures as in the great number 
of excellent painters of each school ; so that the eye goes with 
delight over a wide range of the works of the best painters of 
every age and school, including those of the Dutch, Flemish, 
Upper German, Italian, Spanish and French. I must mention 
Murillo's " Beggar Boys." What a painter he was ! I have 
not seen a poor Murillo ; not one but is most natural and 
admirable. 

I love to linger in these spacious continental galleries, so, 
quiet and orderly, picking out what most pleases me in design 
or form or color, and if often weary of the interminable array 
of themes from Biblical story and the legends of the saints^ 
still find something to admire and be thankful for in the 
tender piety and graceful love which sought in dark and 
untaught times to shadow forth a mystery or record a miracle 
for the comfort and instruction of the people. What visions 



228 The New Pinakothek and its Modern Pictures. 

of grace and beauty, what dreams of terror, what grotesque 
fancies haunted the minds of these early workers in the world 
of art ; from the dying and dead Saviour and tender Madonna 
to the emaciated saint and demons belching flames ; and how 
they struggled with touch upon touch and color upon color 
to depict them adequately ; great bands of gold and wealth of 
purple and crimson and blue and green, and how well, in some 
one respect at least, each one has succeeded ! The motive 
may be unnatural or grotesque, the drawing at fault, the 
grouping absurd, the personages and costumes archaic ; but 
one is sure to find some beautiful, tender or noble sentiment, 
or some bit of delightful execution, which lifts the work of 
>ieven the earliest painters from the mean and trivial, and 
iinvests it with a certain sacred dignity and beauty. At least 
tso it seems to me, as day after day, now for months, I go 
about in gallery after gallery and church after church, in 
these old continental cities. 

There is a collection of modern pictures in a noble building 
designed by Voit, called the New Pinakothek. This numbers 
several hundred pictures by the leading German artists who 
have painted in the present century, including examples by 
Achenbach, Becker, Braekeler, Camphausen, Defregger, 
Diday, Dietz, Feuerbach, Hasenclever, Kaulbach, Lenbach, 
Max, Piloty, Rottmann, Verboeckhoven, Zimmermann, etc. 
With few exceptions, I was not much interested in these, but 
returned again and again to the old collection with renewed 
satisfaction. We also passed a day in two great collections 
contributed by the painters who send their works in to be sold. 
These are very interesting and contain many fine pictures, 
which seem to me to show and indicate a greater variety 
and exuberance of talent than the more stately New Pina- 
kothek. 

Munich is one of the great centres of the fine arts, and the 
agreeable evidences of it are visible on every hand. I think, 
if forced into exile, I should be as well content to wear away 
some years here as in any spot we have found. The streets 
are wide and broken by frequent bits of squares and angles, 
giving place to many noble statues and fountains, the shops 
are bright and rich with all sorts of artistic handiwork, the 
houses are large, commodious and of agreeable exterior. 
The people have a comfortable and refined air which seems 



The Old Palace. — The Brduhaus. 229 

to be in some sort imparted from their elevating surround- 
ings. Munich is situated on a vast plain watered by " Iser, 
rolling rapidly," and has something over 250,000 inhabitants. 
It spreads over a good deal of space, and although an old 
city, has become so modernized that scarcely more remains of 
its mediaeval features than suffices to give it picturesqueness. 
A long line of Bavarian rulers of wealth and taste and liber- 
ality have found their pleasure and pride in enriching their 
capital with noble architecture. 

We visited the Old Palace, or Alte Residenz, erected by 
Elector Maximilian in 1600, and passed through a long series 
of magnificent apartments, and in the Festsaalbau, a modern 
building in the later Italian Renaissance style by Klenze, 
examined the large frescoes by Schnorr, illustrating the poem 
of the Nibelungen. These quite cover the walls of five large 
rooms on the ground floor. This poem is the source of the 
plots of Wagner's operas. In the Glyptothek, or Repository 
of Sculptures, we found many interesting and beautiful 
things. I was specially pleased with a statue of " Venus of 
Cnidos," after Praxiteles, and an original Greek torso of a 
child of Niobe. 

A charming feature of Munich are the plantations of fine 
trees in all quarters, disposed in many natural and agreeable 
forms, which impart a secluded and sylvan aspect to the 
residential portion. 

The beer brewed here under government control is famous 
all over Germany, and also goes largely abroad under the 
general name of Bavarian beer. 'Tis a capital beer, but 
should be drunk here, because, as is said, it is not sent long 
distances without being reinforced with a greater proportion 
of alcohol to preserve it. I went to the Brauhaus, expecting, 
from the glowing accounts I had heard, to find a notable, 
spacious and elegant Trinkhalle where the burghers meet with 
their families, in a sort of half elegance, to drain the foaming 
brown-amber brew and indulge in social amenities to the 
inspiriting sounds of choice music. I passed by a broad door- 
way through a dingy, gray-walled building of enormous 
extent with iron-barred windows, into a gloomy, rough court, 
on one side of which opened a long, low, badly lighted hall 
crowded with plain tables, with wooden settles before each 
one, these filled with the commonest sort of working people. 



230 Mimich Beer. 

not many women, drinking the royal beer from earthen, pew- 
ter-lidded mugs, in a stifling atmosphere of tobacco-smoke 
rolling from five hundred pipes, and a prodigious clatter of 
tongues. The mugs hold a quart, and each consumer, on 
■entering, goes to a tier of long shelves, takes one down, rinses 
it under a running faucet, carries it to a long counter, where 
it is filled from a huge cask ; the brown, mellow girths of a 
whole brotherhood of which loom out of the haze in the back- 
ground. The romance of the Trinkhalle of the Hof Brauhaus 
was rudely dissipated, and one more illusion vanished. But I 
took down a mug, laid on the bar fifteen pfennings, equal to 
three and three-quarter cents, and took a seat opposite a dull 
but cleanly enough gentleman, who might be by profession, 
let us say, a stonemason, deliberately intent on slicing a 
sausage which lay on the table before him in a wrapping of 
newspaper,* and had likely come from his pocket. I noticed 
all about me, that each drinker, when he had finished a 
draught, carefully shut down the lid of his mug, fearful, it 
would seem, of losing some of the finer essence or aroma of 
the wonderful concoction, studiously brought to its perfection 
during three hundred years of learned experiments. When I 
had lifted the lid of my great flagon and taken a deliberate 
and thoughtful pull at it, I set it down with a feeling that the 
lot of the poor man in Munich is very considerably amelio- 
rated by the possibility of such beer — if he only fully realizes 
the blessing of it. Quart mugs would seem to imply that he 
lives up to his privileges ; but there seemed to be no intoxica- 
tion going forward — indeed, I would say one might get over- 
loaded and oppressed with the bulk of this beverage, but not 
drunken ; as the frequenters of English and American bars do 
on spirits. I noticed one or two vaguely hilarious tables, as 
if, after several hours of potation, a low grade of fuddle had 
ensued, but the beer of Munich does not send its consumer 
home to brain his wife or beat his children. But my observa- 
tion is that the average German is too much made up of beer 
and is the worse for it ; still, it is not easy to say, for this is a 
nation of mighty people in brain and brawn. I also visited what 
passes for a more fashionable Trinkhalle, handsome enough 
in itself, with its gaudy frescoes ; but stuck full of little dingy 
tables and crowded with drinkers of all degrees in the social 
scale, except the few uppermost rounds, and stifling with 
heated tobacco-smoke. 



Training of the Young Men of the German Empire. 231 

As in all German cities, soldiers are met everywhere, in the 
handsome blue uniform of Bavaria. It seems to an American, 
whose country is so fortunately placed by nature that its bor- 
ders are peaceful and safe from menace or danger from for- 
eign foes, a great burden and strain upon these continental 
nations to keep themselves constantly on a war-footing and to 
be compelled to maintain enormous armies simply to overawe 
hostile neighbors who would strike if they dared. It is a 
heavy burden, no doubt ; but if one may credit what intelligent 
Germans tell him, and what the superficial observations of one 
visiting a good many important points seem to confirm, there 
are some redeeming features and some offsetting advantages 
in putting the population, as it were, under arms. In the first 
place, it is a necessity calling for sacrifice and self-denial, and 
out of these grow naturally, fortitude, independence and an 
heroic, manly and high spirit. All the young men of the 
German Empire are under obligation to go into the army 
at the age of twenty for a term of three years, and after- 
ward are variously enrolled in the reserves ; so that all 
males between the ages of twenty and sixty are drilled 
soldiers, and liable to serve in some capacity in the armies 
of the Empire in case of war, although their actual service 
in time of peace is limited to certain reviews, somewhat 
like the exercises ,of our State militia, occupying about 
two weeks of each year. The young men who serve for 
three years undergo an admirable system of physical training, 
and as they are sent away from their native districts and 
moved about from time to time into the different states of the 
Empire, and as the sons of the rich and educated and the 
better sort of the middle classes mingle with those of the poor 
and ignorant, the latter obtain an education of the mind not 
of the worst sort, and at the comparatively early age of 
twenty-three are at liberty to go about their own pursuits, 
none the worse fitted for them from having been so exercised 
and drilled and disciplined as to begin life with a sound body, 
erect carriage, and a manly self-respect, united with regular 
habits and orderly obedience to rule. Then, too, the spirit of 
the whole nation is stirred, active and resolute, and kept in 
that mood where great things are always possible. Certain it 
is that this German land is full of life and energy in all direc- 
tions of activity, and steadily prospering. I like the Germans ; 



233 Vienna. 

they are a sincere, hearty, kindly people, of deep natures and 
a trusty, firm strength of character. Their race is not yet 
run either, and they will certainly continue to play an increas- 
ing part in the world's affairs. 

October 12. — Took the train from Paris for Vienna at twelve 
noon and made the distance of about three hundred miles in 
eight and one-quarter hours. This astonishing rate of speed for 
a Continental train is due to ours being a special one, called the 
Orient-Express, made up of sleeping-cars and running, with 
very few stops, from Paris to Constantinople, doing the whole 
distance in little more than seventy hours. There is a 
dining-car attached, where we had table d'hote, at one dollar 
and twenty cents each, but the meal in quality or abundance 
or service does not compare with those on the Pullman cars at 
home. But the train is an excellent one, well-appointed cars, 
with an easy motion over an admirable road-bed. 

The road from Munich to Vienna is over an agreeable, level 
country watered by the Danube, and spreading away in a 
verdure of turf rich as that of England in June, with all the 
marks of prosperity in its fields, villages and towns. Linz, 
one hundred and seventeen miles from Vienna, is an impor- 
tant city on the Danube, of 40,000 population, and here we get 
a view of the Salzburg and Styrian Alps, stretching southward 
in a lofty, broken line of blue, and a little farther on, of the 
quaint town of Enns, whose walls were built with the ransom 
paid by the English to redeem King Richard Coeur de Lion 
from the dungeons of Leopold, Duke of Austria — a sum, as the 
historians say, equal to one-quarter the income of all the peo- 
ple of England ; which would show that the combined incomes 
of the English people in the latter part of the twelfth century 
were ridiculously small, or that the walls of Enns were pro- 
digiously costly, or that most of the money raised was stolen 
somewhere along the line, the last supposition being exceed- 
ingly probable. The sun set in rosy glory, and we finished 
our ride in darkness, arriving at the extensive and luxurious 
Grand Hotel in Vienna at 8.15 p.m. 

The first thing that struck me when I looked out of the 
window Sunday morning, the 13th inst., was the grandeur 
of the buildings within view, both public and private. This 
impression increases as I become acquainted with this mag- 
nificent modern city of some 800,000 souls. I have driven 



A Description of the City. 233 

and walked very considerably about it, and have as yet seen 
very few ancient buildings, although it dates almost from 
the Christian era, when it bore the Roman name of Vin- 
dobona. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius died here 
in i8o. Its fortunes rose and fell through the centuries, being 
high during the Crusades by reason of the trade flowing 
through it, and falling into the hands of Rudolph of Hapsburg 
in 1276, it was made the seat of the dynasty of that house. It 
was twice besieged by the Turks, first under Soliman II. in 
1529, and again under Mohammed IV. in 1683, when they 
were defeated under its walls by John Sobieski, King of 
Poland, with an allied army of Poles, Austrians, Saxons, 
Bavarians and Franks. After the battles of Austerlitz, 1805, 
and Wagram, 1809, the city was occupied for a time by the 
French. Until 1809 it was surrounded by a double girdle of 
fortifications, of which scarcely any traces remain. In 1858 
the inner line was levelled to give place to the Ringstrasse, a 
wide street running round the city, with sub-names for differ- 
ent sections of it, and to this broad avenue streets radiate 
from the centre. On this wide, circular avenue and on others, 
as well as on the numerous public squares, are a vast number 
of grand and beautiful public buildings, palaces and private 
residences, revealing the wealth and public and private spirit 
of this modern city, which looks as new and fresh as Chicago 
and grander than London or Berlin. The fashionable streets 
are lined with cafes, so filled with well-dressed and bright- 
looking people that one would think the citizens lived in 
them, and the footways are thronged with elegant, vivacious 
passengers, the women especially showing more beauty than 
I have noticed elsewhere, and now and then a face flashes 
out such as painters love to copy, but more often imagine 
than meet in real life. I have never seen finer horses, better 
formed or of better action, than swiftly draw the private 
carriages ; even the hackney-coaches go at a great pace 
behind horses fit for any use. In brief, this is a beautiful 
and splendid city. 

There is a large, airy vault, reached by descending a dozen 
steps, under the old church of the Capuchins, where in huge 
sarcophagi of copper, heavily embossed with funereal shapes, 
repose the remains of Maria Theresa and her husband Fran- 
cis, Joseph II., Francis II., Marie Louise Napoleon's second 



.234 The Imperial Ho/burg. 

wife ; and their son the Duke of Reichstadt, who died here 
in 1832. Here, too, rests ill-starred Maximilian, for so brief 
a time Emperor of Mexico (whose place of execution at 
Queretaro in Mexico we visited, now more than two years 
ago), with a vacant place at his side for poor, distraught 
Carlotta, wearing her life away in Brussels. We were shown 
about by a gentle-voiced monk, who reverently rehearsed the 
titles of his sleeping charge, and showed us out into the 
welcome sunlight with a look of such peace that it seemed a 
benediction. 

The Imperial Hofburg, or Old Palace, usually called the 
Burg, the residence of the Austrian princes since the thirteenth 
century, is a huge, irregular pile of buildings surrounding a 
court. We visited the rich Imperial Treasury in one of the 
wings and saw a great number of exceeding rich and exquisite 
articles ; among them the celebrated salt-cellar made by Ben- 
venuto Cellini for Francis I. of France, of which the artist 
says in his autobiography, after minutely describing it, "When 
I showed the king this piece of work he burst into an excla- 
mation of surprise and could never sufficiently admire it." 
Also a great oval dish of silver-gilt by the delightful metal- 
worker, Jannitzer of Nuremberg, in the sixteenth century. 
There are two hundred and seventy-six articles in the cases, and 
the catalogue, with particular descriptions, is interesting read- 
ing. The jewels, the private property of the Imperial Family, 
are also shown ; including the imperial crown of Austria, the 
imperial orb and sceptre, the diamond crown of the reigning 
Empress, whose value exceeds seven hundred and fifty thou- 
sand dollars, with diamonds once forming a part of the jewels 
of the Empress Maria Theresa ; a set of rubies forming a com- 
plete parure, including a tiara, girdle, necklace, pair of ear- 
rings and watch. The greater part of these articles formed a 
part of the bridal jewels of poor Marie Antoinette, Queen of 
France, and having been hid during the Revolution, were 
bought from her daughter, the Princess Maria Theresa, by 
Francis II., Emperor of Germany. Also a set of emeralds, the 
principal of which were taken from a stomacher belonging to 
the Empress Maria Theresa. Also the brilliant diadem with 
the Frankfort solitaire in the centre, a stone of purest water, 
weighing forty-two and one-half carats, bought by the German 
Emperor Francis I. in Frankfort-on-the-Main for twenty- 



The Imperial Treasury s Exquisite Jewels. 235 

eight thousand golden Louis in 1 764, and worn by him as a hat- 
button. Also a diamond necklace, called the rose-necklace, con- 
sisting of thirteen rows of brilliants, which formed part of 
the bridal set called "the Esclarage," received by the Empress 
Maria Theresa at her marriage from her mother-in-law, the 
Duchess Elizabeth Caroline of Lorraine, who had them 
from her mother-in-law, Eleanor, Queen Dowager of Poland, 
daughter of the Emperor Leopold I., who afterward married 
Charles v., Duke of Lorraine. Also the " Florentine," a great 
diamond of a yellowish cast, forming part of a hat-button, 
and weighing one hundred and thirty-three and one-third 
carats, making it one of the largest in the world. It was once 
the property of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who 
always carried it with him on the battle-field to have the benefit 
of the mysterious power then attributed to precious stones. 
He lost it at the battle of Granson in 1476. A Swiss soldier 
picked it up on the road, and thinking it a piece of glass sold 
it to the parish priest of Montigny for a florin ; from whom a 
Bernese got it for three francs. Some years after, a Bernese 
merchant, one Bartholomew May, bought it for five thousand 
florins, and sold it for seven thousand florins to a Genoese, 
who in turn sold it to Duke Ludovico Moro Sforga, of Milan. 
Through the mediation of the great bankers, the Fuggers, it 
was bought for twenty thousand ducats for Pope Julius II., of 
the house of Medici, and remained in that family until its 
extinction in 1737, and later, by a series of marriages, came 
into possession of Francis of Lorraine, the husband of Maria 
Theresa, and through her into the Treasury. 

It pleases me to dwell for a little on the strange history and 
romantic adventures of these precious things, so interwoven 
with the lives and shifting fortunes of mighty personages ; 
and in their flashing radiance one seems to see the great 
scenes of royal olden pomp in which they bore their part, 
flaming on the heads of proud kings and adding lustre to the 
white necks of fair young queens, to be laid aside by some of 
their unhappy wearers after a life of sorrow, tragically end- 
ing. There are fifty-six of these rare articles in this most in- 
teresting collection. There are also the regalia of the Em- 
peror Napoleon I. as King of Italy, the regalia and sacred 
relics of the holy Roman Empire ; but I cannot dwell on them 
at further length. It is with an odd feeling of incongruity 



236 Chateau of Belvidere. — Temple of Theseus. 

that one finds among these secular treasures, and equally- 
guarded and honored with equal precision of date and authen- 
tic history, "a piece of the holy table-cloth which covered the 
table at the Last Supper of our Lord," ''a piece of the holy 
cross," "a chip of the manger of Christ," "a bone of the arm 
of St. Anne," " three links of the iron chains by which the 
Apostles Peter, Paul and John were fettered," "a piece of the 
garment of St. John the Evangelist," and " a tooth of St. John 
the Baptist." 

There is an excellent gallery of pictures, not well accommo- 
dated, in the Chateau of Belvidere, once the residence of 
Prince Eugene of Savoy, but to have place soon in the mag- 
nificent halls of one of the two museums now completing. In 
this gallery is choice store of Rubens' best works in great 
numbers, of Diirer, Titian, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and a long 
line of fine examples in all the continental schools. I passed 
two days in this most interesting collection of some eighteen 
hundred pictures, pretty nearly all good and many notably 
fine. We saw many interesting incunabula, or books'printed 
before the year 1500, among them a Psalter of 1457, printed 
by Schoffer and Faust, in the Imperial Library, occupying a 
grand half-monkish hall, erected in 1722, with fine ceiling 
paintings by Daniel Gran, and in the palace of the Archduke 
Albert a notable collection of drawings by the old masters, 
Raphael, Diirer, Rembrandt, and so on, to the number of 
more than one hundred thousand, many of which I saw with 
curious interest. 

In the pleasant grounds of the Volksgarten is a Temple of 
Theseus, containing Canova's group of the " Victory of 
Theseus over the Centaurs," in white marble ; as grand as his 
monument to the Archduchess Maria Christina, daughter of 
Maria Theresa, in the nave of the Augustan Church, is tender 
and beautiful. Such delicacy of carvmg in the figures of the 
mourning group on their way to the tomb, such anguish and 
sorrow expressed in the cold, mute marble, which seems to 
have melted in grief under this master's hand ! 

At the corner of the Graben and Kartner streets is an odd 
relic in what is said to be the stump of a pine-tree ; so entirely 
overlaid with the heads of iron nails driven into it since 1575 
by believers in its sanctity, who sought by this customary act to 
obtain some spiritual benefit, as to present the appearance of a 



The Prater. — Stock Exchange. — Imperial Stables. 237 

column of solid iron roughened on the surface. This memento 
is protected by standing in a hollowed space in the corner of 
a massive building with a padlocked grate in front. 

The Prater is a park and forest of over four thousand acres 
in extent, belonging from 1570 to 1766 to the Imperial 
Family, who used it as a hunting park, but the Emperor 
Joseph II. opened it as a public resort. The principal avenue 
through this fine wood has a double row of handsome chestnut- 
trees on each side and runs in a straight line three miles, 
much like the Coney Island Boulevard ; where the fine world 
disports itself in the afternoons. 

Passed an hour in the Stock Exchange ; a handsome build- 
ing, with about the same number of brokers in the Pit as in 
the New York Exchange, fully as much Bedlamite vociferation 
and a vast deal more grimacing and fiery gesticulation. 

I am informed that this stately city does not fulfil its busi- 
ness promise of twenty years ago, and that from various 
causes, some of them political, its prosperity is becoming 
divided with Buda-Pesth and Prague. One would not suspect 
any eclipse, however, when visiting the imperial stables, 
where four hundred picked horses, for the different uses of 
His Majesty's self and household, stand in stall in a vast cir- 
cuit of stables covering more than a full Brooklyn block. On 
one of the upper floors is His Majesty's gun-room, where more 
than a thousand pieces, I should say, chiefly for hunting, are 
kept in perfect order and readiness ; also the gorgeous car- 
riages of state, new and old, the panels of one of the latter 
painted by Rubens, it is said. There are stately coaches and 
catafalques for funeral occasions and black caparisons of 
woe for the horses drawing them ; significant of a sorrow 
deeper than ordinary mortals can be supposed to feel or be 
able to manifest. 

We attended a performance of Verdi's opera of " Un Ballo in 
Maschera " in the gorgeous Imperial Opera House, the part of 
Amelia taken by Materna, now obese and showing marks of 
age in person and voice. The auditorium seats twenty-five 
hundred luxuriously, with its five tiers of gilded boxes. 
The great stage was richly and fittingly set for the various 
scenes, the orchestra excellent, the individual parts and the 
choruses well sung by thoroughly trained voices; as it seemed 
to me, an incapable judge of matters musical ; the effort being, 



238 Take Train for Constantinople. 

it would seem, to produce an artistic ensemble rather than par- 
ticularly striking effects. From what I had heard of the ballet 
here, I looked for something better than was shown in the in- 
cidental dancing in the ball-room scene, but very likely this 
was kept subordinated to the general effect. The audience 
would certainly be considered a refined, bright and handsome 
one anywhere, with many fine faces and toilets in the boxes, 
and no display at all of shoulders, busts and arms, so lav- 
ishly made in the boxes and stalls of Her Majesty's Opera 
House, Covent Garden, London. 

October 21. — Took Oriental Express-train of " Wagon-Lits " 
— sleeping-cars — for Constantinople at 9 p.m. Each single 
compartment makes up into two berths at right angles to the 
side of the car; and quite good they are too. The lavatories 
and other accommodations are not at all equal to the Pullman 
sleepers, but answer very well. This train left Paris at 
5 P.M. yesterday, and is due at Constantinople the day after 
to-morrow at 4 p.m. My married daughter, Mrs. Van Deusen, 
joined us yesterday for a month's travel in company, thus 
increasing my party to five. 

October 22. — Woke on avast plain in Eastern Hungary, with 
great fields of Indian corn on either hand and the general ap- 
pearance of our large Western prairies. At 1 1 a.m. reached 
Belgrade, on a height overlooking the Danube, the capital of 
Servia, with 35,000 population, and appearing fully modern. 
The railway from here is said to coincide with the old Roman 
road built by Trajan and used in the first Crusade by the 
hordes pouring into Asia to recover Jerusalem from the 
Mohammedans. We pass through Palanka, follow the valley 
of the Morava — the ancient Margus — cross a mountain-spur to 
Ratcha, on a branch of the Morava, along a mountain-slope to 
ancient Oromago in a defile on a small stream; through sev- 
eral towns with unpronounceable names, over a ridge with 
good scenery, to Alexinatz- -ancient Rappiana — to Nisch or 
Nissa — ancient Naissos, founded by Philip of Macedon, the 
birthplace of Constantine the Great, a.d. 272. We enter 
upon Bulgaria, pass through Sofia, its capital, with scarcely a 
glimpse of its low yellow buildings, traverse the Balkan 
Mountains — ancient Hsemus — through an ancient pass with 
rocky sides like a Colorado canon. The Balkan range is some 



Constantinople. 239 

4500 feet high, and the peak of Mount Scarpus, in our sight 
for many hours, nearly 10,000 feet. 

The country we have been traversing now since leaving 
Hungary is flat for the most part, treeless, poorly watered, not 
unlike the broad alkaline plains of the West, if we think of 
these as somewhat more fertile and capable of crops. The 
brown monotonous expanse of dusty plain is enlivened rarely 
with petticoated peasants ploughing in the cheerless fields, with 
great white oxen yoked four to five feet apart — but more 
sensibly than in Germany and elsewhere on the Continent, 
because the draught is from the shoulder — flocks of large, 
coarse-wooled sheep, white and black ; squalid villages of low 
clay houses or huts, thatched with straw loosely laid--why 
they do not burn up daily is a marvel. At the stations gather 
groups of natives, barbaric in form, feature and costume ; 
among them fierce, wild, handsome horsemen on magnificent 
horses, with long guns strapped to their shoulders and belts 
stuck full of pistols and daggers ; each one a walking armory. 

Early in the afternoon of Monday a narrow line of blue 
water gleams between low brown shores, extending south- 
ward, where the sky, clear and warm, shows more soft than 
elsewhere over the Sea of Marmora ; whose waters, except 
in this bright bay, are as yet invisible, but continue to re- 
appear in its many little indentations on our right. Villages 
of strange aspect grow more frequent on the dusty plain, the 
blue sea itself appears, the misty hills of Princes' Island rising 
between us and the Asiatic shore — a long line of lofty gray 
walls with battlemented towers of Roman construction rises 
on our left ; we are whirled through a breach in them, skirt the 
shore of the Sea of Marmora, whose transparent wavelets 
almost wash the base of the railway, roll with scarcely 
diminished speed through a confusion of flowing robes, bare 
brown legs, swarthy faces capped with red fezzes swarming in 
the narrow streets ; and all at once are in the depot of Con- 
stantinople and take carriage among a Babel of crowding, 
hoarse-throated Oriental cabbies, to be driven over a long 
bridge across the Golden Horn, up a steep, narrow street to 
the Royal Hotel, where we have spacious rooms on the first 
floor and on the sunny side. From our balcony the config- 
uration of the city is apparent. 



340 A NigJit of Discordant Sounds. 

Except for the carpets and rugs and some few articles of 
furniture and ornament in our rooms and elsewhere about the 
house, one might suppose one's self in any one of a score of 
the hotels we have had entertainment in since coming to the 
Continent, and we went to a table d'hote at 7 p.m., of the 
usual French menu. The guests at table bore a cosmopolitan 
character. A quiet-looking gentleman whom I had noticed 
on the train proved to be the president of the Imperial Bank 
in London and a director ot the Imperial Ottoman Bank 
here ; come to look into its affairs as he told me, and seeming 
quite able to do so, with his strong Scotch face. Beside him 
were seated two young English gentlemen, also our fellow- 
passengers, in full dress, as if they felt it incumbent on them 
to maintain the English table fashions under whatever sky ; 
the pleasant family of a New York gentleman whose acquaint- 
ance we had made on the train ; a German gentleman, in busi- 
ness here ; a Frenchman ditto ; a solitary lady of undisclosed 
nationality, and one or two others — all, ourselves included, 
feeling more than usually curious perhaps, and drawn toward 
one another from the fact of our remoteness from familiar 
conditions. 

We had noticed a great number of ill-conditioned, mongrel 
curs all along our way from the depot, and Betty had mourned 
over the sudden demise of one in the street before our bal- 
cony, occasioned by its Oriental indifference to fate in allow- 
ing a carriage to be driven over itself without the slightest 
movement on its own part to prevent it. As night came on 
after a glorious sunset, in whose glow the tranquil waters of 
the Golden Horn shone in roseate light, such maddening, in- 
cessant and discordant din of barks, howls, yelps and canine 
cries of rage and anguish came in at our windows and were 
continued with scarcely an interval of cessation all the night 
long, that I heartily wished that all the rickety vehicles 
of the entire city could be set in fatal motion over their 
vile carcasses. To add to the horrors of the night, a re- 
sounding clang began under our windows early in the even- 
ing, stroke upon stroke, lasting a full half minute, and renewed 
at regular intervals of a quarter of an hour, all night long. At 
first I took it to be the noise of a paver's rammer pounding 
the flagging into place, but came to understand that it was 
the customary signal of the watchman to make it known to all 



Scutari : Its Golgotha. 241 

whom it might concern that he had completed his round 
without shirking. 

October 24. — A warm, bright day. Crossed the Bosphorus in 
a small steamer to Scutari, a quarter of Constantinople on the 
Asiatic side, taking the boat from the middle of one of the 
two wooden drawbridges connecting Pera and Galata with 
Stamboul. We landed at the foot of a dirty, narrow street 
broadening into a little square near the quay, and then rising 
steeply along a causeway of rough stones whose irregularities 
reminded me of Brooklyn's side-streets, -lined with shabby 
little wooden houses and swarming all about with clamorous 
vagabond human and animal life. It required all the efforts 
of our dragoman, Joseph Jacob, and the use of the eleven lan- 
guages he claimed to be master of when I engaged him last 
evening, to prevent our being thrust bodily into the many 
rickety, dirty landaus lying in wait for fares. At length, after 
a deal of shrill hubbub of voices and wild gesticulation and 
swaying backward and forward of a river of red fezzes, we got 
deposited in two of these vehicles, and with Joseph on the box 
beside the driver on one and Frattini on the other, forced our 
way through the mob with loud cries of warning ; our raw- 
boned and worn horses warmed to their work under the whip 
and constant jerks at the bits, and we pounded along up the 
rocky ascent with an expectation which possessed me all day, 
that the rattling carriages would break in pieces the next 
moment. But they did not, and we rolled on, jolting and sway- 
ing from side to side in a cloud of hot dust, and entered upon 
a lonesome avenue, passing through the vast burying-ground 
of Scutari, used as such, Joseph said, for a thousand years. 

It would not be easy to imagine anything more desolate and 
mournful than this dusty city of the dead, where no objects 
meet the eye but plain, narrow stone slabs, not less than 
seven feet high, set as thickly as they can be planted on their 
narrow bases in the dismal shade of tall cypresses. Not a 
patch of green earth anywhere, scarcely a glimpse of the sky, 
only a wilderness of dusty gray stones standing ghost-like in 
the gloomy silence. Passing through this Golgotha and over 
a stretch of dull country we reached the well-planted and kept 
English cemetery, where on a promontory, laved on one side by 
the blue waters of the Sea of Marmora, sleep some ten thou- 
sand soldiers of the English armies, slain in the battles of the 
16 



343 The Howling Dervishes. 

Crimea and wasted in the hospitals of Scutari ; the yellow walls 
of that one where noble Florence Nightingale toiled in 
deeds of mercy standing in plain sight a little lower down on the 
gradually sloping Asiatic shore. On the horizontal grave- 
stones are many titled names, and Inkerman and Balaklava 
are often repeated. The loving care of their far-distant 
friends and countrymen has made a beautiful spot of this one 
piece of sacred earth. To the south the blue and tranquil 
Sea of Marmora stretches away beyond the sight, broken 
only by the high, undulating profile of Princes' Island, to-day 
half veiled in violet mist ; to the westward, on its many hills, 
domed and minareted Stamboul, gleaming in the abound- 
ing light ; and running northward the shining line of the 
Bosphorus dividing Asia from Europe, the Orient from the 
Occident. 

From the cemetery we drove to an eminence on the north 
of Scutari, Mount Boulgourlou, whence, after a short climb on 
foot, we beheld a wide panorama extending twelve miles 
around and including a glimpse of the Black Sea. On the 
way we met, walking along a suburban road, three ladies of 
the harem of a court dignitary having a country palace here, 
not so closely veiled that we might not easily see that two 
were old and ugly and one young and pretty. But the 
striking figure of the little party was a tall, robust, handsome 
Nubian, with a proud step, swarthy, but not to the point of 
blackness, whom Joseph informed me in a whisper belonged 
to that mutilated class fitted to be the custodian of an 
Oriental harem. 

Our main purpose in Scutari to-day is to witness the exer- 
cises of the howling dervishes, these occurring only on Thurs- 
day ofeach week and in this quarter of the city. We were 
shown into a hall some 30 by 50 feet, overhung by a latticed 
gallery, under which and behind a railing running round an 
area some 20 by 30 feet a row of turbaned devotees squatted 
on carpets, and within the railing, likewise in sitting groups 
and rows, a score of dervishes praying in a low. monotonous, 
not unpleasing sing-song. Their ages are all along from 
twenty to seventy years, the last being about that of the 
chief, who, sitting at the upper isnd, looking toward the 
sacred city of Mecca, led rather than directed the exercises. 
There was one full-blooded negro in the number. 



Pious Gymnastics. 243 

Their flowing robes of many pleasing shades of color, their 
swarthy faces surmounted with white turbans, their pictu- 
resque groupings, so that these colors harmonized, the after- 
noon light cautiously admitted through small windows and 
directed so as to fall most effectively, the grave dignity and 
introspection evident on all the faces, formed a scene strange 
and impressive. The salutations and obeisances they used 
were graceful and reverential movements. When the droning 
chants had continued so long as to begin to grow weari- 
some, by an easy change of positions, during which several 
recruits entered the enclosed space, all except the old men, 
who continued to sit cross-legged on their carpets,- rose, 
and forming a compact line across the lower end of the arena, 
began gradually to sing in a higher tone and increasing 
volume of voice, accompanied with rapid and violent move- 
ments of the head and body, carried to an amazing pitch. 
The prayerful ejaculation of ^^ A/lah hour seemed to explode 
from their throats like bullets, in deafening puffs ; and the 
principal participants rolled their heads with prodigious 
velocity, as if gaining impetus to throw them into each other's 
faces. The young Ethiopian worshipper was especially 
remarkable, and with incredible swiftness and without a 
second's intermission for more than an hour threw his body 
forward, as did the others, until his face nearly touched his 
knees, and erected it again as if it were flung into place by a 
powerful steel spring running along his spine. Rivulets of 
perspiration glistened in their channels down his dark hide, 
until, when- human nature would seem to find it impossible to 
endure longer, his movements were checked by some order 
secretly conveyed, and he was apparently advanced in rank 
by removal from the end of the line, where he had performed 
his meritorious gymnastics, to a position midway between two 
older athletes of maturer sanctity, where he stood quiescent 
during the remaining exercises. 

While this extraordinary worship was at its height, a pretty 
boy not more than six years old, habited in a green turban 
and brown robe descending to his naked feet, whom Joseph, 
when we drove up, had pointed out, playing outside among 
other lads, as a young dervish, entered the enclosed space and, 
extending his arms, began whirling on the spot where he 
stood, and without moving six inches from it, with such 



244 A Strange Form of Blessing Children. 

rapidity that his features became almost indistinguishable, 
making, as nearly as I could count, more than oTie hundred 
revolutions per minute ; and this dizzy spinning he main- 
tained for twenty-six minutes by my watch, and then walked 
away and out of the hall quite as fresh-looking as when he 
entered, having attracted no notice at any time from his older 
brethren. A little later a number of children of both sexes 
came in singly and in groups and ranged themselves in a row 
near the chief, who had risen and sought to take into his arms 
from its father a mere babe, who screamed in such terror that 
il was borne out, while the older children — the oldest might 
^have been eight years — laid themselves down on their faces side 
iby side closely in a row. The chief, a tall, spare man, then 
^walked across the children, stepping somewhat carefully, but 
iresting his whole weight on the one nearest him, then on the 
-next, and so on, until he had literally stepped on each one ; 
placing his foot on the upper part of their thighs, and return- 
ing to his place in the same manner. They did not seem at 
all hurt by the pressure of his weight, and when the ceremony 
was over jumiped up, gathered about him, kissed his hands 
'and ran out. As near as I could learn — it seems quite impossi- 
ble to ascertain the significance of this ancient worship — this 
treading upon the children is a form of blessing, and is sup- 
posed to ward off and cure diseases. 

We drove down to the landing and dismissed the carriages 
in the same hubbub in which we took them, and returned 
across the smiling Bosphorus, amid a shoal of the long, slen- 
der, canoe-like boats called caiques, and the shorter, broader 
and safer row-boats known under the general name of 
barques. The westering sun flooded with glorious light the 
close ranks of low white walls rising from the water rank above 
rank to the high crest of the promontory, to whose sides the old 
city of Stamboul clings on the extreme point of the ridge, 
its gray walls washed by the sea and strait ; the imposing build- 
ings of the old Seraglio, now unoccupied, stately and myste- 
rious in their spacious enclosure, above which tall trees 
whispering no secrets, and gilded domes and pinnacles rise as 
they have done through many dark centuries ; and although 
some of the inland parts were destroyed by the fire of 1865, 
to me the most fascinating spot in the city. 

October 25. — Drove northward through Pera to Yildiz, the 



The Saleftili':. 245 

palace of the present Sultan Abdul Hamed II., to see him go 
to mosque. This takes place at noon of Friday, the Moham- 
medan Sabbath, when he, as Caliph of the Mussulman world, 
attends official religious service. This ceremony called the 
salemlik, has been regularly observed since 1361, and is a 
pompous, theatrical scene. By the courtesy of our charge 
d'affaires here, Pendleton King, Esq., we received a permit 
from the Grand Marshal of the palace to occupy with others 
an apartment in a building appertaining to the palace, but 
outside its walls, looking upon the wide avenue leading down 
from the gate in the lower side of the palace-walls, through 
which the cortege descends to the beautiful modern white 
marble Mosque of Hamidiea, diagonally opposite. From 
the windows we had a full view up to the palace, across to the 
mosque and down upon the picturesque masses of troops 
guarding the lower end of the street, behind whom the peo- 
ple, in variegated and picturesque crowds, pressed for a view. 
The palace stands on the brow of a considerable hill in the- 
northern suburb of Pera, its isolated position and extensive 
pleasure-grounds enclosed in lofty walls, making of it really a 
country residence. The Sultan is said not to leave his palace 
here except to make this weekly ofificial ceremonial. The whole 
distance from the gate to the mosque is not more than forty 
rods ; the way is lined with soldiers and all avenues of ap- 
proach are strongly guarded. Ordinarily some four to five 
thousand troops are in attendance ; but as the German Em- 
peror is to make a visit here next week, arriving in his steam- 
yacht, the " Hohenzollern," from Athens, there is to-day a 
sort of preliminary display, and some twenty thousand various 
troops are present. 

The side of the street toward the mosque is open, and only 
an iron railing separates it from the small square in which the 
mosque stands. At noon the muezzin from one of the min- 
arets calls to prayer, and in a hush of expectation, signs of 
the coming of the " Commander of two continents and Ruler 
of two seas " began to appear along the freshly sprinkled road- 
way. First came a close coach drawn by four led horses richly 
caparisoned, containing the Sultan's mother, followed by an- 
other bearing the Sultana, these ladies looking, through the 
open coach-windows, to be heaps of Oriental silks and other 
rich stuffs, so closely were they wrapped and veiled. In a 



246 The Cortege of the Sultan. 

third rode a princess some sixteen years old, and in a fourth 
another princess, a child of perhaps eight years. These 
daughters- of the Sultan had uncovered faces, pretty and pale 
and childish, and looked like those beautiful great dolls 
luxuriously arrayed by the lavish taste of the Parisian 
manufacturers. Then came the young prince, also in a coach, 
wearing a military suit of dark blue, his regular, smooth, 
waxen features relieved by a slight black mustache and large, 
soft black eyes. He looked to be a youth of twenty years, 
and quite harmless. Then followed two led horses of the 
Sultan, one black, the other an Arabian, both of beautiful 
form and handsome action, bearing rich saddles ; then alight, 
empty phaeton drawn by a pair of gentle, cream-colored 
horses, and lastly an open landau with the Sultan by himself 
on the back seat and two high officers, one military and one 
civil, facing him on the front seat. He wore a black frock- 
coat buttoned in front, with several orders on his breast, and 
a red fez on his head. This he always wears, and it is a rule 
that all Turks shall do the same, while his other subjects may 
exercise a choice of headgear. Before he had reached the 
entrance to the mosque, the preceding carriages had been 
stationed on either hand and the horses detached ; their occu- 
pants remaining inside them, as the Sultan enters and wor- 
ships alone. So he rode along slowly, amid the blare of many 
bands playing wild, martial music, and plentiful cries of wel- 
come, to the marble steps of the mosque, descended and 
walked alone on the carpet spread for the purpose, up into 
the interior ; where he remained for nearly an hour, during 
which all waited patiently, the troops being served with water 
from long, conical leathern cans strapped to the backs of car- 
riers. When he reappeared and had descended the steps, still 
unaccompanied, he got into the phaeton and by himself drove 
the cream-colored horses slowly back to the palace-gate, his 
cortege following in the order it used before. 

The Sultan is forty-nine years old, and fully looks it. He has 
a mild, thoughtful face, an erect bearing, and firm step — not 
a greatly remarkable man to look at. From some point of 
observation, either on or within the palace-walls, out of sight 
of our station, he now reviewed the troops, who occupied 
nearly two hours in marching past. These were from various 
parts of his vast dominions in Europe, Asia and Africa, and 



The Sultan Reviews His Troops. 247 

in their striking national garbs formed a strange and magnifi- 
cent spectacle in the midst of these Oriental surroundings : 
regiments of Albanians in the dress now become the national 
costume of the Greeks, their belts stuck full of pistols, dag- 
gers and yataghans ; Egyptians, tall, bronzed, sad-faced men 
in white turbans wound round with coils of dull green cloth 
like serpents, mingled with regiments of the Turks proper, 
wearing the fez. The cavalry were mounted on fine horses, 
two regiments of lancers especially so. These soldiers seemed 
to me capital material, but not altogether well drilled. 
Some companies marched with the German step exaggerated 
almost to burlesque, evidently under the training of officers 
who carried it much further than the model they had adopted. 
Some of these, in addition to a great backward bend of the 
spine and a dancing-master pace, sought to heighten their 
warlike appearance by a scowling visage and a martial fierce- 
ness of the eye, and glared along the lines as if they would 
make nothing of charging a battery single-handed. If the 
young German Emperor has a sense of humor it must cer- 
tainly be tickled at the review next week to see the neat, clean, 
firm step of his German officers at home so travestied. 

By immemorial custom nothing must hinder the Sultan from 
performing this weekly ceremony of the salei/ilik, if he be 
alive. Not hail, rain, or any tempest ; pestilence, earthquake or 
his own sickness must keep the Caliph of the Faith from these 
official prayers, which cannot be made for him by any one 
else. 

On the 26th we made an excursion, in company with our 
New York acquaintances, extending the whole length of the 
Bosphorus, from Seraglio Point to the Black Sea, twenty miles, 
or rather to a point where the view extends into the opening 
of that sea, following the European shore as far as Roumeli- 
Kavak. We pass on the water's edge or on the hill-side the 
handsome and substantial palaces or summer residences of 
the ambassadors of Sweden, Russia, Holland, France, Ger- 
many, and, farther up, England and that of the United States 
Minister. These European powers are a watchful and fatal 
presence here, gathered like eagles to the prey, waiting, and 
perhaps willing, to aggravate the disorders of the sick man, 
impatiently looking for his demise and ready enough to seize 
upon his effects before the breath leaves his body, if not re- 



248 Classical Gj'oicnd. 

strained by mutual jealousy, wherein lies the safety of the 
Turk in Europe. 

The shore is gently undulating, sloping upward to a con- 
siderable ridge, the scanty herbage dead and brown, as it is 
ten months in the year, for lack of rain. The villages are 
single streets along the water, where small, mean and dirty 
houses show now and then the variety of long, beautiful palace 
fronts of white marble, with rarely the dull walls of an old 
mosque lifting its slender minaret in air, and often terraced 
gardens climbing the slope with graceful trees and an attempt 
at verdure. Four miles up from the city is a little village 
where Medea is said to have joined Jason on his return from 
Colchis, and a mile farther on is Bebek village and bay, the 
ancient Chefae, where the Greeks built a temple to Diana, and 
near by on a prominence the college founded in 1863 by Mr, 
Robert, of New York, and spoken of by all as an institution 
doing much good in the cause of education. 

In the almost continuous line of villages beyond the upper 
arm of the bay are some cemeteries greatly venerated by the 
Turks, because here lie buried the Ottomans who first crossed 
over from Asia with Mohammed II., and just beyond stand the 
grand ruins of the Roumeli-Hissar — the Chateau of Europe — 
a prodigious series of stone towers with massive connecting 
walls, built by that Sultan in 1452 to command the Bosphorus 
before his capture of Constantinople. Here is the narrowest 
part of the strait — about one-quarter of a mile wide — where 
Darius built a bridge, over which he passed an army from Asia 
of seven hundred thousand men, where the Crusaders crossed, 
and lastly the Turks, who still remain. On the Asiatic shore 
opposite, at Anatoli-Hissar, are the ruins of less extensive but 
greatly impressive towers. A mile above opens a deep bay 
whose shores are prettily studded with good houses amid con- 
siderable verdure at the upper end, where a small stream comes 
in ; with Therapia on the northern arm, where we had a fairly 
good dinner on shore at the Hotel d'Angleterre on the quay. 
This spot is the old Pharmakia — poisons — taking its name 
from some one of the many legends of Medea and her necro- 
mancy, what time she 

" Gathered the enchanted herbs 
That did renew old .^son," 



The Exagij^eratwn of Travellers. 249 

and these shores are the scenes of the exploits, perils and de- 
liverances of Jason and his Argonauts in search of the Golden 
Fleece ; told fully and with wonderfully strange and poetical 
beauty by William Morris in his poem of " Jason." 

At Roumeli-Kavak the seventeenth and final landing on the 
European side is reached, and the boat crosses to the Asiatic 
shore of the Bosphorus and follows it down on its return, with 
frequent landings at Turkish villages not dissimilar to those 
on the opposite shore, and presenting the same sharp contrasts 
of opulence and squalor. 

To read the heated accounts of travellers, especially of 
the French nation, who seem to have adopted the Oriental 
habit of exaggeration as soon as they set foot on these histori- 
cal shores flushed with the romance of so many centuries, one 
would suppose the whole scene to be of enchanting beauty ; 
but I take the liberty of assuring those of more temperate and 
sober minds that the descriptions of Theophile Gautier and all 
his class are as rose-tinted as those of Moore's " Lalla Rookh." 

We pass in sight of a dome-like hill rising from the tawny 
ridge of the monotonous Asiatic coast, called Giant's Moun- 
tain, or Mount of Joshua, of classic interest, where, according 
to an old legend, Amycus, King of the Bebryces, was killed by 
Pollux in a boxing-match and buried on its top. The coast 
lower down is indented by frequent shallow bays, and on the 
little promontory of Hieron once stood a temple to the " Twelve 
Gods," endowed by Jason on his return from Colchis ; and 
near by a temple to Jupiter Favoring, built by the Chalce- 
donians, changed afterward by Justinian into a church dedi- 
cated to the Archangel St. Michael. This promontory is the 
termination of the Bithynian range of mountains and con- 
fronts the limit of the range of the Balkans — the ancient 
Haemus — on the European side. 

Our dragoman, Joseph, is of himself an interesting study. 
His pretence is that he is a German. One cannot question 
this, perhaps, but one would not suspect it, so fully has the 
stoical fatalism of the Orient subdued the original Teutonic 
features of his nature. Whether he is arranging the terms of 
the contract by which he serves us during the brief sojourn 
we propose in the city of his adoption, or guiding us, in car- 
riage or by boat or on foot, among the objects of interest in 
this marvellous agglomeration of polyglot humanity, stolidly 



250 The Dancing Dervishes. 

awaiting our movements, humoring our wishes, indulging our 
whims, he is the same always, imperturbable, unruffled, inscru- 
table, all commands and desires of ours being to him alike 
important, or rather alike indifferent, and fulfilled on his part 
with the same tranquil and heavy complaisance, not without 
intelligence showing in his dull face, and prompt and easy 
acquiescence, as if he were born under Moslem rule and in 
the Moslem faith, with Kismet as the ruling fact of his life. 
He has lived here for forty years, is married — how much he 
did not state, nor did I venture to inquire — and declares 
himself the father of eleven young children depending on 
his earnings as dragoman ; perhaps stating the number of 
the pledges of his multitudinous affection high enough and 
not too high to interest the more susceptible members of 
our little party in the pecuniary success of his services while 
in our employ. 

He guided me on Sunday — the only possible day — down 
an ancient, jagged, stony street, leading from our hotel so 
precipitously as to make foothold difficult, to the balconied 
hall where the dancing dervishes hold their weekly religious 
exercises. These were not of the wild, grotesque and resilient 
nature I had been led to expect from the accounts I have 
read in the books of excited travellers. At least they were 
not so on this day, but were rhythmic, graceful and dreamy ; 
almost languorous. Some twenty or thirty slender, gentle- 
featured youngish men in dark robes and cylindrical head- 
dresses, after prescrioed prayers, such as we observe the 
imams or priests to make in the mosques, rose in a large circle, 
with much courtly and refined salutation of each other, some- 
what as partners make to each other in the opening of a 
cotillon, only more prolonged and continued into an inter- 
change of places ; with frequent kissing of hands and grace- 
ful gestures of significant acts of prayer not understood by 
me. All this was long continued and repeated over and 
over, to the low and melodious notes of an orchestra of flutes 
and long, softly-breathing horns ; and finally several, laying 
aside their robes and space being made for them, extended 
their arms and spun rapidly about, but neither so rapidly 
nor so long as the little boy whose wonderful movements I 
have tried to describe in our visit to the so-called howling 
dervishes. Altogether a most graceful, almost tender cere- 



The Grand Bazar. 251 

mony in that plain and not unpicturesque hall with its lat- 
ticed galleries and sedate, calm-eyed, many-colored Moham- 
medans squatting in rows all about ; the light falling from the 
high, narrow windows in varying distinctness here and there 
on the clean floor, relieved all about with richly hued rugs. 
On our toilsome way back, at the corner of a very narrow 
lane intersecting the street we were climbing, stands one of 
the houses common here ; a small two-story structure of un- 
painted wood with the invariable projecting latticed window. 
As we approached it I noticed a masculine Turk standing under 
the window in an attitude expressive of the most abject hu- 
mility and contrition, while through the lattice from an un- 
seen female issued the unmistakable sounds of high and 
termagant scolding, falling in a scalding torrent on the abject 
son of Islam, who made no reply, save a deprecatory gesture 
expressing much, and intended to excuse and conciliate. 
Joseph could not or would not explain why this evident 
householder should stand at his own door unable or unwill- 
ing to enter, so lashed by the unseen voice from his ill-regu- 
lated harem. Plainly trials of a domestic sort are not con- 
fined to the Western world. 

Of wonderful interest are the bazars or markets of Stamboul. 
The Grand Bazar is an enormous covered space vaulted and 
lighted by little domes rising from the vast flat roofs, a city 
within a city, an inextricable labyrinth of winding avenues, 
streets and lanes, lined with countless little shops stuck close 
together on either hand, open spaces at the crossings, small 
squares here and there enlivened with fountains, thronged 
with an innumerable multitude of buyers, crowding, pushing, 
chattering, bargaining — confusing beyond conception. The 
little shops, or rather booths, have their fronts quite open, the 
interior being reached by two or three steps up from the 
rough stone-paved passage-way, and on a sort of low counter 
running along the front sits the imperturbable merchant 
cross-legged, dignified, taciturn, picturesque in his red fez, 
blue jacket, broad parti-colored girdle, baggy trousers, and red 
morocco slippers. His more showy goods, whatever he may 
deal in, are ostentatiously scattered about the entrance, and 
hang suspended to the supporting posts and along the walls 
of the flimsy structure. Usually there is behind this a closed 
and dusky room whence can be produced for serious buyers 



253 The Mosques of Stamboiil. 

out of presses and chests and other hiding-places, much richer 
goods than are in sight. Although our mercantile friend 
appears so unconcerned, he has really not neglected to take 
measures to obtain his fair share of custom, for as we advance 
along the crowded ways we are constantly importuned by eager 
salesmen or drummers, who in quite sufficient English seek to 
draw attention to the shops they represent, often lying in wait 
for a considerable distance in advance ; and near at hand in 
the front shop is always a smiling, handy and shrewd clerk, 
acting under the eye of the proprietor as he sits calmly smok- 
ing, who will exhibit the stock with tireless patience, putting 
to the various articles not less than ten times the price he will 
finally accept. The goods exposed for sale are of Eastern 
form and fabric, silks of rich colors, cloth of gold, beautiful 
embroideries, all novel and pleasing, but of no great variety, 
as it seems to me. 

The mosques of this city are reckoned at four hundred and 
eighty, of which ninety were made such from the ancient 
Byzantine churches. Most interesting structures they are, 
lifting their tall, slender, graceful, balconied minarets into the 
intense blue of the sky, like admonishing fingers. Only 
within a comparatively short time have unbelievers been 
allowed to visit them, but now, under strict guidance, one 
may freely do so, all save the peculiarly sacred one of Eyoub, 
into which no one, not even ambassadors of foreign nations, 
is permitted to penetrate. It was erected by Mohammed, the 
conqueror of Constantinople, in 1460, in honor of Eyoub, the 
standard-bearer of the Prophet, slain in the siege of Constan- 
tinople A.D. 668. In its court is the tomb of the companion 
of the prophet, whose sword, the highest and most sacred sym- 
bol of Mohammedan power, and the green banner of the 
Prophet are preserved here. The mosque with its two minarets 
stands in a grove of stately trees, and about the tomb of 
Eyoub burn unceasingly a great number of lamps. 

Specially interesting is the Ahmedie or Mosque of Ahmet, 
situated in a vast enclosure, amid lofty trees, on the great 
open space called At-Meidan, the ancient Byzantine Hippo- 
drome, existing as such before the time of Constantine. Six 
lofty minarets rise from it, a greater number than any mosque 
possessed when Ahmet I. built it in 1610, except the Kaaba of 
Mecca, to which, in consequence, was added a seventh. After 



The Mosques of Ahmet and Solyman the Magnificent. 253 

the Mosque of St. Sophia this is the principal one in Constan- 
tinople, and the richest in revenues. The great commemorative 
festivals are celebrated here. The sun was near its setting as 
we emerged from it and took places in our carriage in the 
great space of the Hippodrome ; a roseate glory suffused the 
motionless air, when there rose, clear, high and vibrant, the 
voice of the white-robed muezzin standing on one of the upper 
balconies of a minaret; his bronze features strongly contrast- 
ing with his white turban, as in the magical light pouring full 
upon him he issued the call to prayer, which is thus translated : 
"Most High! There is no God but the one God ! Mohammed 
is the Prophet of God. Come to prayer ! Come to the 
Temple of Life !" I wish I might complete the picture with 
pious devotees suspending all avocations to prostrate them- 
selves at the call in the direction of Mecca, for then I should 
be in agreement with the accounts I have read, but am con- 
strained to say that I saw no notice taken of the summons by 
the scattered groups upon the amphitheatre or by the rows 
of dusty idlers squatting in the shadow of the walls. This 
charming mosque rises from the third of the ridges on which 
Stamboul is situated, counting from the Bosphorus ; and 
looking from the paved space on the summit to the east of 
the mosque, I saw a great smoke lighted up with broad sheets 
of flame in Scutari, on the Asiatic side. This spread rapidly, 
and while we watched seemed to involve a great space. 

Most sumptuous and fairest of situation of the mosques in 
Stamboul is that of Solyman the Magnificent, called Sulei- 
manie, constructed in 1550 by Sinan, of the highest fame as 
an architect. Like all original mosques — by which I mean 
those not converted from early Christian churches — its interior 
is nearly a square, with sides 290 feet in extent, surmounted 
by a lofty, hemispherical dome. Four minarets rise above it. 
Behind stands the tomb of Sultan Solyman the Magnificent, 
exquisitely wrought of white marble, into which one passes 
through a vestibule where four pillars of verd anticuie support 
a cupola, while the inner one rests upon four columns of white 
marble and as many of red porphyry. Under this dome, en- 
closed by a balustrade of costly wood incrusted with mother- 
of-pearl, rests the coffin of the great Sultan, covered with 
magnificent shawls, each worth a king's ransom. Splendid 
arabesques adorn the walls, also beautiful plaques of white 



254 Mosque of St. Sophia. 

and blue pottery of Persian manufacture. The dome is beset 
with huge lumps of unpolished crystal, and from it hang 
lamps thickly adorned with precious stones. Near by and 
only less magnificent is the tomb of his wife, the beautiful 
Sultana Roxolana, the seductive, accomplished and cruel Rus- 
sian slave whom the infatuated Sultan raised to the throne 
and allowed to lead him by her evil inspiration. 

Memorable is our visit to the great Mosque of St. Sophia, 
converted from the Christian church of the same name built 
on the site of an earlier one by the Emperor Constantine the 
Great in 326, and destroyed by fire in 531. As it now stands 
it is the work of the Emperor Justinian, who laid the corner- 
stone in 532 and gathered from all parts of his vast empire an 
amazing richness of material in costly marbles, works of art 
and treasures of all sorts. In its vast and majestic interior, 
rising in arch above arch of beautiful and impressive propor- 
tions, twenty-five thousand worshippers may gather, and the 
cost is computed at seventy million dollars of our money. 
Of course the altar and all insignia of Christian worship have 
been removed, as Mohammedanism permits no shrines or 
images of saints in its mosques ; and as all worship is in the 
direction of Mecca, the matting covering the floor is so laid 
that the seams run in that direction, so as to indicate to the 
faithful their true position in the act of prayer. 

Until somewhat recently, as 'I have said, unbelievers were 
not admitted to the mosques, but this is now freely permitted 
under certain easy restrictions ; one being that all must enter 
with uncovered feet. Even this has been so far modified, in 
deference to the stubborn foot-gear of Western infidels, as to 
permit of putting on over one's shoes a sort of loose slipper, in 
which the visitor shambles awkwardly along the matted floor. 
I had the misfortune to don an uncommonly ill-fitting and per- 
verse pair, of which one or the other would now and then be- 
come detached ; and whenever this occurred a half dozen 
white-turbaned Kaims, a lower order of clergy having in 
charge the order and regulation of the mosque, gathered about 
to see that the delinquent foot did not touch the ground until 
the awkward slipper was restored to its place. Here and there 
in the majestic and solemn space, their forms dwarfed by dis- 
tance, crouched robed and turbaned figures reading in a sing- 
song tone from volumes of the Koran lying open on cushions 



Expounders of. the Koran. 255 

before them, rocking their bodies to and fro in regular, un- 
ceasing motion ; and cuddled together under the great dome, 
all prostrate, a group of some thirty about one in priestly 
garb with full beard, who, sitting cross-legged, seemed to be 
expounding with an air of authority the contents of an open 
book, and listened to with eager and reverential attention by 
the younger, bright faces upturned to his. I asked Joseph 
what might be the nature of this absorbing discourse, and 
he, cautiously moving within earshot, returned to say that the 
grave and learned teacher was enforcing from the Koran the 
steps in due order of the ablution required before attending 
religious services in the mosque, and that many days would 
be given to instruction on that point of ceremonial. One can 
hardly conceive a more grandly impressive interior than this 
noble mosque, beautiful in its sublimity. 

Before leaving Stamboul to day, it occurred to me to count 
as many of the dogs as possible, seen on the way to our hotel, 
a distance of perhaps two miles, I do not understand it to 
have been a particularly good day for dogs, but was able to 
reckon very nearly four hundred in sight from our carriage. 
These dogs, the scavengers of the city, are mongrel curs, 
mostly of smallish size and a dirty brown color, rather intel- 
ligent-looking and not bad-tempered. I incline to think, 
from what I saw and heard, that there is truth in what is said 
of their having their own quarters of the city, from which 
they are not allowed to stray, being set upon and driven back 
by their canine neighbors whenever they attempt to change 
domicile. 

After dinner walked out into the gathering night to a point 
looking across to Scutari, where the conflagration is still 
raging and seeming to be an ocean of flame, lighting up the 
sky and gleaming luridly on the blue Bosphorus. Next 
morning we learned that two hundred and fifty houses, two 
mosques and one Greek church had been fully consumed and 
many hundreds of poor people made houseless and beggared. 
Such a conflagration is not at all uncommon, as the small, 
unpainted wooden houses set close together are in the long 
dry season like tinder-boxes, and the only apparatus for 
extinguishing fires ridiculous portable squirt-guns, carried to 
the scene on the shoulders of brawny, bare-legged firemen in 
a disorderly rush, with loud outcries and frantic and well-nigh 



256 The Old Seraglio. 

imbecile efforts, so that a fire ceases only when there is a lack 
of combustibles to feed on. 

Fair, too, are the white marble palace-walls gleaming from 
plantations of stately trees and the ornate fountains in the 
little squares. Of the former, no one has for me the interest of 
the old Seraglio in its air of seclusion and mystery, standing 
conspicuously on the point of the promontory overlooking at 
once the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus and the Golden 
Horn ; now tenantless and silent, but thronged with sinister 
memories of intrigues, poisonings, assassinations, through 
many dark and bloody centuries. Whenever in sight of it, by 
an irresistible fascination my mind calls up its history and 
the romances associated with it : Sultanas shining on perfumed 
divans, their blazing gems not brighter than the lustrous eyes 
of the wearers, laughing odalisques whose fair necks shall 
come to the bowstring on the least suspicion, truculent 
eunuchs with scimitars ready in their golden belts, hushed 
mutes gliding along dim corridors bearing fatal messages ; 
the scenes of Oriental voluptuousness, distrust, faithlessness 
and revenge, all ceased now ; the dumb walls standing silent 
in the purple atmosphere, the blue water smiling below, 
the solemn cypresses murmurous only of the sounds of modern 
life. 

The really beautiful structures in this city, the palaces, 
mosques, tombs and fountains, are painfully in contrast v.dth 
the generally mean aspect of the city, and the pleasing 
impression derived from a distant view is changed to one of 
disgust as the visitor finds himself involved in the vile, narrow 
streets, swarming with dirty life, squalid and reeking with 
nauseating stenches. The anticipated visit of the German 
Emperor and Empress next week is made the occasion of 
scraping off the upper layer of filth from the streets along 
which the procession of honor is to pass, and these are still 
further distinguished by daubs of red and green on an occa- 
sional shop-front. Among the many fruits exposed for sale 
are delicious melons of a flavor combining the best tastes of 
the watermelon and cantaloupe. 

We passed some hours in the extensive warehouse and show- 
rooms of the firm of Souhamie Sadullah & Co., and were 
shown innumerable Eastern carpets and rugs and rare and 
costly embroidered and woven stuffs, a good deal of which 



A Turkish Ware/wuse and ^'Holy Moses." 257 

comes to our country through private purchasers. The ven- 
erable Turk who met us at the entrance and conducted us to 
a member of the firm came to us later with a copy of Mark 
Twain's " Innocents Abroad, " and stating himself to be the 
Holy Moses therein described, stood by while we gravely 
read the page devoted to him, beaming with satisfaction at 
the facetiously extravagant portrait drawn of him by that re- 
nowned humorist, and plainly taking pride in it as a sincere and 
cordial recommendation. The partner who showed us about 
with much civility, although of full Turkish blood, had mar- 
ried a wife from Connecticut, and— she coming in to call upon 
him — politely introduced us to her and two pretty little girls, 
their children, both dark of skin, with black hair and eyes 
fully Oriental ; and to complete the picture, her gray-haired, 
slouchy father lounged about in baggy trousers, jacket and 
fez, a transmogrified Yankee, quite at home in his Turkish 
garb and well illustrating the cosmopolitan nature of that 
ubiquitous race. We were shown a ladies' sleeping apart- 
ment completely fitted up in the Turkish manner, with a beau- 
tiful carpet, charming hangings, divan, and articles of Oriental 
ornament and bric-a-brac, including a rare tea service. The 
German Empress will visit this establishment and be shown 
into this room, and if — as surely she will — she express 
admiration of it, will be informed that its contents are hers, 
and all will be sent to Berlin — and the bill to the Sultan. We 
were served in a cool apartment of the establishment with 
little cups of coffee made in the Turkish way ; this being a 
refreshment to its customers in which the house prides itself 
as being superior to what can be had almost anywhere else 
in the city. The coarsely ground berries of the coffee are put 
in the cup, boiling water poured on, and when seasoned to 
taste drank off directly. 

The evening spectacle from the balcony of our apartments 
in the Royal Hotel — the same as were occupied by the Hon. 
Samuel S. Cox when Minister here — is strangely enchanting. 
The eye follows the declining street running down sharply 
past our hotel to the Golden Horn, its lights throwing into 
relief the motley and fantastic passengers ; the slim, tall 
cypresses of the ancient cemetery below us on the right rising 
solemnly against the deep blue sky, whose constellations glow 
and sparkle with a lustre I have never seen before ; beyond the 
17 



258 On the Bridge. — De Amicis. 

gleaming line of the Golden Horn, Stamboul rising steep 
above steep, its domes and minarets faintly showing in the 
faint lights ; and beyond the Bosphorus, the dim outlines of the 
undulating Asiatic hills and the twinkling lamps of Scutari ; 
and coming to the ear from all directions, a confusion of sounds 
•alien and barbaric, not unsuited to the unfamiliar surroundings. 

Nowhere is the outdoor life of this cosmopolitan city to be 
seen to such advantage as on the long wooden bridge connect- 
ing Pera with Stamboul. In the hurrying processions which 
pass and repass all through the day are mingled all nationali- 
ties, types and costumes of the Eastern world. The Italian 
traveller De Amicis has sketched this with so attractive a pen- 
cil, albeit in heightened colors, such as all tourists seem to 
use freely in the Orient, that I will transcribe it bodily ; and 
allow my reason, whenever I turn to these imperfect notes 
that I may refresh my imperfect memory, to make the proper 
allowance for the ardor of the Italian's vivid nature : 

" The crowd passes in great waves, each one of which is 
of a hundred colors, and every group of persons represents 
a new type of people. Whatever can be imagined that is 
most extravagant in type, costume and social class may there 
be seen within the space of twenty paces and ten minutes 
•of time. Behind a throng of Turkish porters who pass, run- 
ning and bending under enormous burdens, advances a sedan- 
chair inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, and bearing an 
Armenian lady ; and at either side of it a Bedouin wrapped 
in a white mantle and a Turk in muslin turban and sky-blue 
caftan, beside whom canters a young Greek gentleman fol- 
lowed by his dragoman in embroidered vest, and a dervish 
with his tall, conical hat and tunic of camel's-hair, who makes 
way for the carriage of a European ambassador, preceded by 
his running footman in gorgeous livery. All this is only seen 
in a glimpse, and the next moment you find yourself in the 
midst of a crowd of Persians in pyramidal bonnets of Astrak- 
han fur, who are followed by a Hebrew in a long yellow coat 
open at the sides ; a frowzy-headed gypsy woman with her 
child in a bag at her back ; a Catholic priest with breviary and 
staff ; while in the midst of a confused throng of Greeks, 
Turks and Armenians comes a big eunuch on horseback, cry- 
ing out " Larya !" (" Make way!"), and preceding a Turkish, 
carriage painted with flowers and birds, and filled with the 



Odd Costumes and Foot-Covering. 259 

ladies of a harem, dressed in green and violet, and wrapped 
in large white veils ; behind, a Sister of Charity from the hos- 
pital at Pera, an African slave carrying a monkey, and a pro- 
fessional storj'-teller in a necromancer's habit ; and what is 
quite natural, but appears strange to the new-comer, all these 
diverse people pass one another without a look, like a crowd 
in London, and not one single countenance wears a smile. 
The Albanian, in his white petticoat and with pistols in his 
sash, beside the Tartar dressed in sheepskins ; the Turk, astride 
his caparisoned ass, threads pompously two long strings of 
camels ; behind the adjutant of an imperial prince, mount- 
ed upon his Arab steed, clatters a cart filled with all the odd 
domestic rubbish of a Turkish household ; the Mohammedan 
woman afoot, the veiled slave woman, the Greek with her red 
cap and her hair on her shoulders, the Maltese hooded in her 
h\-^iQ.V faldetta., the Hebrew woman dressed in the antique cos- 
tume of India, the negress wrapped in a many-colored shawl 
from Cairo, the Armenian from Trebizond, all veiled in black 
like a funeral apparition, are seen in single file, as if placed 
there on purpose to be contrasted. 

" It is a changing mosaic of races and religions, that is com- 
posed and scattered continually with a rapidity that the eye 
can scarcely follow. It is amusing only to look at the pass- 
ing feet and see all the foot-coverings in the world go by, from 
that of Adam up to the last fashion in Parisian boots — yellow 
Turkish babouches, red Armenian, blue Greek, and black Jew- 
ish shoes ; sandals, great boots from Turkestan, Albanian 
gaiters, low-cut slippers, leg-pieces of many colors, belonging 
to horsemen from Asia Minor, gold-embroidered shoes, Span- 
ish alporgatos, shoes of satin, of twine, of rags, of wood — to 
many that while you look at one you catch a glimpse of a 
hundred more. One must be on the alert not to be jostled 
and overthrown at every step. Now it is a water-carrier with 
a colored jar upon his back ; now a Russian lady on horse- 
back ; now a squad of imperial soldiers in Zouave dress, and 
stepping as if to an assault ; now a crew of Armenian porters, 
two and two, carrying on their shoulders immense bars, from 
which are suspended great bales of merchandise ; and now a 
throng of Turks, who dart from left to right of the bridge to 
embark in the steamers that lie there. There is a tread of 
many feet, a murmuring, a sound of voices, guttural notes, 



260 A Variety of Religions. 

aspirations interjectional, incomprehensible and strange, 
among which the few French or Italian words that reach the 
ear seem like luminous points upon a black darkness. 

" The figures that most attract the eye in all this crowd are 
the Circassians, who go in groups of three and five together, 
with slow steps ; big-bearded men of a terrible countenance, 
wearing bear-skin caps like the old Napoleonic guard, long 
black caftans, daggers at their girdles, and silver cartridge- 
boxes on their breasts ; real figures of banditti, who look as 
if they had come to Constantinople to sell a daughter or a 
sister, with their hands imbrued in Russian blood. Then 
the Syrians, with robes in the form of Byzantine dalmatic and 
iheir heads enveloped in gold-striped handkerchiefs ; Bulga- 
rians dressed in coarse serge, and caps encircled with fur ; 
'Georgians in hats of varnished leather, their tunics bound 
round the waist with metal girdles ; Greeks from the Archi- 
pelago, covered from head to foot with embroidery, tassels and 
.shining buttons. 

" From time to time the crowd slackens a little, but instantly 
other groups advance, waving with red caps and white tur- 
bans, amid which the cylindrical hats, umbrellas, and pyramidal 
head-dresses of Europeans, male and female, seem to float, 
borne onward by that Mussulman torrent. 

" It is amazing even to note the variety of religions. The 
shining bald head of the Capuchin friar, the towering Jani- 
zary turban of an Ulema, alternate with the black veil of an 
Armenian priest ; im.aums with white tunics ; veiled nuns ; 
chaplains of the Turkish army, dressed in green, with sabres 
at their sides ; Dominican friars ; pilgrims returned from 
Mecca with a talisman hanging at their necks ; Jesuits ; 
dervishes— and this is very strange — dervishes that tear their 
own flesh in expiation of their sins, and cross the bridge under 
a sun-umbrella — all pass by. 

'* If you are attentive, you may notice in the throng a thou- 
sand amusing incidents. Here is a eunuch showing the white 
of his eye at a Christian exquisite who has glanced too 
curiously into the carriage of his mistress ; there is a French 
cocotte, dressed after the last fashion-plate, leading by the hand 
the beloved and bejewelled son of a pasha ; or a lady of Stam- 
boul feigning to adjust her veil that she may peer more easily 
at the train of a lady of Pera ; or a sergeant of cavalry, in 



Extraordinary Contrasts. 2G1 

full uniform, stopping in the middle of the bridge to blow his 
nose with his fingers in a way to give one a cold chill ; or a 
quack taking his last sous from some poor devil, and making 
a cabalistic gesture over his face to cure him of sore eyes ; or 
a family of travellers arrived that day and lost in the midst of 
a throng of Asiatic ruffians, while the mother searches for her 
crying children, and the men make way for them by dint of 
squaring their shoulders. Camels, horses, sedan-chairs, oxen, 
carts, casks on wheels, bleeding donkeys, mangy dogs, form a 
long file that divides the crowd in half. 

" Sometimes there passes a mighty pasha with three tails, 
lounging in a splendid carriage, followed by his pipe-bearer on 
foot, his guard and one black slave, and then all the Turks 
salute, touching the forehead and breast, and the mendicant 
women, horrible witches, with muffled faces and naked breasts, 
run after the carriage, crying for charity. Eunuchs not on 
service pass in twos and threes and fives together, cigarette in 
mouth, and are recognized by their corpulence, their long 
arms and their black habits. Little Turkish girls dressed like 
boys, in green full trousers and rose or yellow vests, run and 
jump with feline agility, making way for themselves with their 
henna-tinted hands. Bootblacks with gilded boxes, barbers 
with bench and basin in hand, sellers of water and sweet- 
meats, cleave the press in every direction, screaming in Greek 
and Turkish. At every step comes glittering a military division, 
officers in fez and scarlet trousers, their breasts constellated 
with medals ; grooms from the seraglio, looking like generals 
of the army ; gendarmes with a whole arsenal at their belts ; 
zebecks, or free soldiers, with those enormous baggy trousers 
that make them resemble in profile the Hottentot Venus ; im- 
perial guards with long white plumes upon their casques and 
gold-bedizened breasts ; city guards of Constantinople, as one 
might say required to keep back the waves of the Atlantic 
Ocean. The contrasts between all this gold and all those rags, 
between people loaded down with garments, looking like 
walking bazars, and people almost naked, are most extraor- 
dinary. The spectacle of so much nudity is alone a wonder. 
Here are to be seen all shades of skin-colors, from the milky 
whiteness of Albania to the crow blackness of Central Afiica 
and the bluish blackness of Darfur ; chests that if you struck 
upon them would resound like a huge bass or rattle like pot- 



262 The Mingling of the Beautiful and the Horrible. 

tery ; backs, oily, stony, full of wrinkles, and hairy like the 
back of a wild boar ; arms embossed with red and blue and 
decorated with designs of flowers and inscriptions from the 
Koran. 

" But it is not possible to observe all this in one's first pas- 
sage over the bridge. While you are examining the tattoo on 
an arm, your guide warns you that a Wallachian, a Servian, a 
Montenegrin, a Cossack of the Don, a Cossack of Ukraine, an 
Egyptian, a native of Tunis, a prince of Imerezia, is passing 
by. It seems that Constantinople is the same as it always was 
— the capital of three continents and the queen of twenty vice- 
realms. But even this idea is insufficient to account for the 
spectacle, and one fancies a tide of emigration produced by 
some enormous cataclysm that has overturned the antique 
continent. An experienced eye discerns still among the waves 
of that great sea the faces and costumes of Caramania and 
Anatolia, of Cyprus and Candia, of Damascus and Jerusalem, 
the Druse, the Kurd, the Maronite, the Croat, and others — 
innumerable varieties of all the anarchical confederations 
w^hich extend from the Nile to the Danube and from the 
Euphrates to the Adriatic. Seekers after the beautiful or the 
horrible will here find their most audacious' desires fulfilled ; 
Raphael would be in ecstasies and Rembrandt would tear his 
hair. The purest types of Greek and Caucasian beauty are 
mingled with flat noses and woolly heads ; queens and fairies 
pass beside you ; lovely faces and faces deformed by disease 
and wounds ; monstrous feet and tiny Circassian feet no 
longer than your hand ; gigantic porters, enormously cor- 
pulent Turks, and black sticks of skeleton shadows of men 
that fill you with pity and disgust — every strangest aspect in 
which can be presented the ascetic life, the abuse of pleasure, 
extreme fatigue, the excess of opulence and the misery that 
kills. 

" Who loves colors may here have his fill. No two figures 
are dressed alike. Here are shawls twisted around the heads, 
savage fillets, coronets of rags, skirts and undervests in stripes 
and squares like harlequins, girdles stuck full of knives that 
reach to the arm-pits, Mameluke trousers, short drawers, 
skirts, togas, trailing sheets, coats trimmed with ermine, vests 
like golden cuirasses, sleeves puffed and slashed, habits monk- 
ish and habits covered with gold lace, men dressed like women 



A Confusion of Tongues. 263 

and women that look like men, beggars with the port of 
princes — a ragged elegance, a profusion of colors, of fringes, 
tags, and fluttering ends of childish and theatrical decorations, 
that remind one of a masquerade in a madhouse, for which all 
the old-clothes dealers in the universe have emptied their 
stores. 

"Above the hollow murmur that comes from this multitude 
are heard the shrill cries of the sellers of newspapers in every 
tongue, the stentorian shout of the porters, the giggling 
laugh of Turkish women, the squeaking voices of eunuchs, the 
falsetto trill of blind men chanting verses of the Koran, the 
noise of the bridge as it moves upon the water, the whistles 
and bells of a hundred steamers, whose dense smoke is often 
beaten down by the wind, so that you can see nothing at all. 
All this masquerade of people embarks in the small steam- 
boats that leave every moment for Scutari, for the villages of 
the Bosphorus and the suburbs of the Golden Horn ; they 
spread through Stamboul, in the bazars, in the mosques, in 
the suburbs of Fanar and Galata, to the most distant quarters 
on the Sea of Marmora ; they swarm upon the Frankish shore, 
to the right toward the Sultan's palace, to the left toward the 
higher quarters of Pera, whence they fall again upon the bridge 
by the innumerable lanes that wind about the sides of the hills ; 
and thus they bind together Asia and Europe, ten cities and a 
hundred suburbs, in one mighty net of labor, intrigue and 
mystery, before which the mind becomes bewildered." 

I am sorry to be obliged to add a prosaic note to the effect 
that I have never seen a more ungraceful gait than the female 
pedestrians practice as they waddle awkwardly along, " hen- 
toed," their ankles encased in slouchy stockings, their feet 
thrust into loose yellow or red slippers without heels, and only 
kept in place by a world of practice. Nor are handsome faces 
at all frequent. The Turkish women go abroad apparently 
with perfect freedom, the wealthy in close carriages, the poorer 
sort with their forms covered with the feridjie, or long loose 
robe or mantle of white cloth or silk, their faces covered with 
XS\^ yashfuak, or light, thin veil, which leaves only the eyes ex- 
posed, but, as managed almost universally by its wearers, quite 
plainly revealing all the features, unless one seeks for some 
special reason to conceal the face, and I should say this is far 
from common. 



264 On Our Way Back to the Western World. 

There is prevailing here and in other Eastern cities, as we 
are informed, an epidemic of the dangue, a short-lived fever, 
with great pains in the limbs, not often fatal, and, as the 
charge d'affaires here, Mr. King, who is from North Carolina, 
informs me, is very like what is known in our Southern States 
as break-bone fever. Fortunately none of our little party are 
affected by it. We have prolonged our visit sufficiently, for 
although very much has of course been imperfectly seen, we 
carry away a tolerably fair impression of this strange and 
wonderful city founded by Constantine the Great in the fourth 
century of our era on the older Greek city of Byzantium, itself 
dating from the seventh century before Christ, and now num- 
bering nearly a million of the most heterogeneous population 
of any city in the world. 

We take our last dinner at the good table of the comfort- 
able Royal Hotel, but may not finish until Betty, whose heart 
is pitiful to all, the least of the creatures God has made, has 
abundantly supplied with her own hands an exhausted canine 
mother lying exposed under the window in the midst of her 
numerous blind litter ; and under the charge of the constant 
dragoman, Joseph, and the agile Frattini, reach the station of 
the Oriental Express in the early evening, where we have a 
long wait, while 'mid infinite hubbub the train is got ready. I 
passed a half hour walking with Betty in a little dusty garden 
connected with the station, and sought to answer her eager 
questions about the stars shining overhead in marvellous 
splendor. The whistle screams, the rush and hubbub redouble, 
we take our compartment, and with effusive salaams and hand- 
kissings on the part of Joseph Jacob, slowly roil out into the 
night under the shadow of the mighty walls which have borne 
bravely the sieges and assaults of nigh twenty centuries, and 
are on our way back to the better civilizations of the Western 
World. 

October 31. — Left Constantinople at 7.30 p.m. in a sleeper 
of the Oriental Express-train, and woke next morning on the 
boundless plain which, watered by the Danube, stretches from 
western Hungary to the Black Sea, broken only by the Balkan 
chain of mountains, and in its western portion, so far as one 
can judge, of great fertility, but for want of rain becoming in 
its eastern expanse an arid, undulating desert. Almost the 
whole of Servia and all of Hungary we traversed are like an 



Buda-Pesth. 2G5 

Iowa prairie, and would seem capable of yielding enormous 
crops of cereals and fruits. While along the line of the road 
a good deal of the soil is under cultivation, one sees very few 
farmsteads, so that the land must be in the hands of large 
proprietors, or its owners live in the villages at inconvenient 
distances away. Certainly the soil is capable of sustaining a 
great population under favorable circumstances. On the 
morning of November 2d we left the train at Buda-Pesth, the 
capital of Hungary, after two most uncomfortable nights in 
a close, ill-ventilated and ill-accommodated sleeping-car, bad 
to a degree unknown on any road I have travelled over at home 
in the last twenty years. 

Buda-Pesth is a quite modern city in all its aspects, beauti- 
fully situated on the Danube, here a broad, noble river, with 
Buda on its right bank and Pesth on its left, the two cities 
being connected by a handsome suspension-bridge. Their 
united population is something over 400,000, and I should say 
that, with the exception of Vienna, we have not visited on the 
Continent a more handsome, well-built, bright and fine city. 
One might fancy himself in New York or Chicago when 
driving along its wide streets, thronged with well-dressed 
people and lined with fine shops all in modern guise, until one 
would recall that neither American city is as well-paved nor 
can show so fine public buildings. Here again my ignorant 
prepossessions got another rude correction. I had thought of 
the Hungarians as a half-wild, intractable nation, full of fire 
and a noble spirit, but unpractical and half Oriental in costume, 
manners and way of life, and here I am in their principal city, 
to find it more modern than London, with all the marks and as- 
pects of high civilization and refinement. Quite likely there 
are not many so poorly informed as I have been in this matter. 

We called on a niece of Louis Kossuth, who was educated 
at the same school with my wife in New York, and is now 
married to a Hungarian gentleman here. It was pleasant to 
learn from her that her uncle, now eighty-nine years old, is 
living in Turin, Italy, in good health and activity of mind, 
passing his time among his books and the flowers he loves to 
cultivate, and able to speak last summer for more than an 
hour in the open air to a great company of students who 
called upon him. I referred to the surprising skill he showed 
in the use of the English language in the eloquent speeches 



266 Venice. 

he made in America on the occasion of his visit to the United 
States in 1852. She said he learned English in the prison 
where he was confined for two years, and had as his only books 
the Bible, Shakespeare and an English dictionary. She said 
of the brilliant painter Munkacsy that he was the son of an 
upholsterer in a little village near Buda-Pesth, and attracted 
attention to himself by the wonderful way in which, when a 
lad, he painted pictures on the trunks or chests his father 
made for the country people. 

Came on to Vienna and took night train for Venice, three 
hundred and ninety-eight miles, arriving at our rooms in the 
Royal Hotel Danieli at 3 p.m. on November 5th. Awoke this 
morning, after a poor night in a hot, cramped sleeper, to find 
ourselves near Villach on the Drave, two hundred and thirty 
miles from Vienna, and still among the Tyrolean Alps, in a 
cold rain. We had fine mountain scenery to Pontebba and 
a hasty cup of coffee there, after a slight examination of 
our luggage by the Italian Custom-House. Passed through 
Udine, the capital of the Venetian province of Friuli, a town 
of importance, with 28,000 inhabitants. The country along 
the way grew more level and then marshy, like parts of the 
New Jersey coast near Long Branch, with oozy channels 
among the coarse grass worn by the tides of the Adriatic, the 
shallow bays of which deeply indent and overspread the land. 
We crossed a solid bridge more than a mile long, resting on 
handsome brick arches, and rolled into a railway station with 
solid earth all about and nowise differing in the character of its 
location, so far as one would notice, from any other on good, 
solid earth, and Frattini, opening the door of our compart- 
ment, called out " Venice !" 

I was not at all satisfied with this humdrum introduction 
to the Bride of the Adriatic. I might as well have been in 
the depot at Rochester and have heard the magic name of 
Venice spoken under its smoky vault. Nor was the case im- 
proved when, after walking under cover of the prosaic roof, we 
emerged on a platform to be solicited by a crowd of dirty 
fellows in ready-made clothing of material and fashion like 
unto that which greets the eye of the stunned traveller when 
he steps outside the Grand Central Depot in our well-regu- 
lated metropolis and is invited to have a cab — solicited, I say, 
and vehemently urged to come without loss of time into a 



The Grand Canal.— Piazza of St. Mark. 3G7 

long, narrow, black and dirty boat floating among twenty- 
others alongside the platform in water of a dirty sage-green, 
stretching away to right and left between rows of grim 
old houses rising from it on either side. " What is this ?" I 
asked Frattini as soon as we floated from the wharf, and being 
answered, " The Grand Canal," sank back on my seat, the 
most disenchanted of men. The sky was leaden, the air cold, 
we had had little sleep and no breakfast, and in a resigned 
and apathetic state of chilled enthusiasm hardly knew or 
cared by what devious watery ways we came to the hotel on 
the Riva degli Schiavoni, out on which and the broad lagoon 
to the south our cheerful rooms look from the second floor. 
A bright sitting-room, made more so by the blaze of a hand- 
ful of fagots laid on the tiniest of andirons, a bath, a change 
of dress, an excellent dinner, disposed me to look kindlier on 
the external world. Vainly does any man imagine that he is 
the same being before and after dinner. If, as we are taught, 
the soul is a spiritual entity capable of an independent exist- 
ence in other and higher states of being, it is certainly true 
that in its present sojourn it is fast-bound to a material associ- 
ate, and until the clamorous and vulgar wants of its partner 
are satisfied, it is nowise at liberty to find comfort in exercising 
its own functions, but is obstructed and fretted and unfit for 
enjoyment. This by way of preface to saying that, cheered and 
fortified as indicated above, I went forth from the portal of 
the Hotel Danieli, built by the blind old Doge Dandolo more 
than four hundred years ago wherein to entertain the ambassa- 
dors to the Republic, and turning to the right, a few steps took 
me to the bridge connecting the Riva with the Molo across 
the Canal Paglia, and stopping on the arch of it, looked up to 
the Bridge of Sighs and along the frowning wall of the old 
prison to my right and the bright fa9ade of the Palace of the 
Doges on my left, and then passing along the southern front 
of it, stood before the superb columns of polished granite with 
their exquisite capitals on one of which rests the winged lion of 
St. Mark and on the other St. Theodore atop of his crocodile. 
These front the water at the opening of the Piazzetta, or broad 
paved space leading into the Piazza of St. Mark, to the centre of 
which I at once betook me, and looked with strained and de- 
lighted attention on the marvels of architecture all around, ob- 
jects familiar to my mind through pictures and books, seen a 



268 Search for the American Consul. 

thousand times in fancy and longed for from boyhood. Here 
they all are more grand, more beautiful, " more moving-deli- 
cate and full of life " than my imagination had painted them : 
the Church of St. Mark with the four bronze horses over its 
glorious portal, the clock-tower, the imposing Campanile with 
its sculptured vestibule, the long line of massive marble palaces 
on three sides of the square, the red flag-staffs rising from 
their exquisite bronze pedestals — all are here ; and this indeed 
is Venice the wonderful. 

The following day was cool enough to make a blaze on our 
hearth desirable ; leaden clouds kept their places sullenly, with 
fits of rain ; but hiring a gondola, I set out to find our consul 
here, taking his address from the directory, and gliding along 
the Grand Canal amid old palaces, reached it to fi.nd him 
removed elsewhere. Getting another address after much 
inquiry, the porter at the old one being ignorant of his where- 
abouts, we came in sight of the American flag-staff rearing 
itself obliquely from the third story of a lonely house on the 
Grand Canal. We found he had again removed, no one whom 
we found within knowing where, and only after much inquiry 
among watermen and market people, up and down, did we 
come upon his modest rooms on a little square on a side canal. 
The young gentleman who upholds the honor of our nation 
here is holding over from Mr. Cleveland's term, this being his 
fifth year, and his frequent change of residence would seem to 
be explained by the statement he made when dining with me at 
our hotel the next day, that his salary, no fees or other perqui- 
sites attaching, is one thousand dollars per annum, from 
which he pays all expenses, including the rent of his premises. 
This would seem to be a rather shabby stipend, and one 
would think him not likely to be disturbed, though why an 
able-bodied and energetic enough young man, to look at him, 
should continue in it I did not learn. 

In the afternoon again admired the glorious structures 
surrounding the Piazza and passed an hour in the church, or, 
as it is now in fact, the Cathedral of St. Mark. This consum- 
mate flower of architecture is not imposing by reason of its size, 
and more resembles one of the mosques of Constantinople in 
its outward form than a Christian church, having, indeed, 
been remodelled in the Byzantine style from an earlier Roman- 
esque form in the twelfth century. Some Gothic features, too, 



Cathedral of St. Mark. 26 Q 

were added, but such is the richness and beauty of its adorn- 
ments, or rather of its intrinsic structure, that the mind 
refuses to see any incongruity in its parts, and dwells with 
satisfied delight on the endless variety and completeness, the 
marvellous tints and the softened harmonies which everywhere 
meet the eye in bewildering and sumptuous profusion. The 
mosaics cover an area of 46,000 square feet, and date all the 
way from the tenth to the sixteenth century ; without and 
within are five hundred columns of marble, mostly from the 
Orient, with capitals of exquisite carving in all styles conceiv- 
able, and everywhere is profusion of gilding, bronze and the 
richest marbles ; so that the whole interior, and, for the mat- 
ter of that, the exterior of the walls as well, might be cut into 
small parts, framed and hung on the walls of a room one 
wished to beautify with choice ornaments. I am quite incapa- 
ble of describing this gem of the earth, this pride of Italy, 
whose builders and decorators fairly revelled in the construc- 
tion of it, and as if, in an ecstasy of the imagination, they had 
quite forgotten or abandoned the formal rules of art, and, with 
a strange and profuse freshness of creative power poured the 
prodigal richness of the East upon this shrine of the Occi- 
dent. Time has softened the hues of the costly marbles and 
blent all into a more perfect harmony of color. The rich floor 
has become so uneven by the irregular giving way of the 
foundation that in nave and transept and under the great 
central dome it fluctuates like the swell of the ocean arrested 
and frozen into stone, but by a careful process of restoration 
all is fixed and continuous, so tliat the effect is even heightened 
by this peculiarity. 

The gondola grows in favor as one becomes more familiar 
with it. The commonest sort are no more pleasing objects 
than any other black, weather-worn boats, but the better ones, 
with their bright steel prows, carved sides and tops, brass 
decorations, stuffed leathern seats and fringed cloth canopies 
or felzes, are graceful, convenient and picturesque. They 
carry six persons, besides two gondoliers, one in the body of 
the boat forward, the other perched on the high stern, where 
he presents a pleasing figure as he guides his long, narrow 
craft with singular dexterity, using only one oar against a 
rowing-post set some four feet from the bow on the left side. 
AH gondolas are painted black, and the cloth covering of the 



270 The Gondolas : on the Grand Canal. 

little cabin, which is easily removable and left ashore in fair 
weather, is of the same sombre color. This fashion continues 
as the result of a sumptuary law enacted in the fifteenth 
century to check the extravagant outlay practised by the 
citizens in the ornament of these indispensable vehicles, which 
here take the place of carriages, there being not a horse nor 
anything on wheels in the city, I believe. As the gondolier 
has so far given way to the spirit of the age as to rig himself 
out generally in nondescript ready-made garments, which are 
as fatal to romance as a steam-engine, I engaged a handsome 
gondola by the day for our use, with the condition that the 
gondoliers should put on the uniform the better sort of them 
have for occasions. 

The next morning the sun rose in a sky of soft blue, warm- 
ing the pare sea air with a feel of September ; our gondola 
floated in the narrow canal at the side entrance to the hotel, 
with two brawny, bronze rowers in dark blue suits faced 
with white and girt round the waist with colored sashes, and 
we set forth on the Grand Canal, gliding by time-stained, 
silent palaces of various and massive architecture, beautiful in 
their decay, the fair vestiges of noble and wealthy families 
whose names shine in the annals of the last five centuries. 
From the Grand Canal, frequent narrow ones open on either 
side, no streets being visible ; the houses everywhere rise 
from the water, as if a well-built and populous city should be 
inundated and its streets flooded up to the very thresholds of 
the houses. The tide rises something above two feet in the 
city, and at its full the gondolas set their passengers down on 
the very topmost steps of the landings. Families who maintain 
private gondolas indicate their residences by tall posts planted 
in the water in front, bearing their coats-of-arms in colors. 

Very many of these palaces which line the Grand Canal along 
its length of two miles are not less than one hundred feet in 
front, with four lofty stories, of elaborately carved stone, some- 
times faced with richly colored marbles. Not many of them 
are fully occupied, and very few by descendants of the old 
families' who built them. Many are let out in flats, many are 
closed altogether, quite a number are used for business pur- 
poses and a few are owned or rented by foreigners, and the5:e 
-have an appearance of being really human homes. One of 
the finest is now being renovated by Mr. Browning, son of 



The Rialto Bridge.— The Ghetto. 271 

the poet Browning, who married Miss Coddington, of New- 
York. This rich stone pile, of enormous size and cost, cer- 
tainly could not be built or purchased on Manhattan Island 
for less than a quarter of a million dollars ; and as an illustra- 
tion of the condition of the real-estate market here, I might 
mention that I was informed that this cost Mr. Browning forty- 
five thousand dollars. Fine and grand as these old houses 
are, one would think it a dreary thing, after the novelty had 
worn off, to live on the water and have no way of leaving 
one's house except by boat. We pass the pretty balconied 
house said, by I know not what fantastic tradition, to be that 
of Desdemona what time she was wooed by the Moor, the 
Contarini Palace, the Cavalli, the Foscari, and a plain house 
built on a grand foundation, begun by Francisco Sforza, the 
traitor, but ordered by the Republic to be left unfinished, 
the Palace Balbi, Pisani, Dandolo, Bembo, Ca d'Oro, Pesaro, 
Vendramin, Calergi, and many another one famous in old- 
time annals. 

Half way up the Grand Canal is the famous Rialto Bridge, 
"where merchants most do congregate," and until the iron 
bridge was built some distance below the only one span- 
ning the Grand Canal and connecting the eastern and west- 
ern quarters of the city. This noble structure consists of a 
single marble arch of 74 feet span and is 158 feet long, 46 
wide and 32 high, resting upon twelve thousand piles. It was 
built in 1588 by Antonio da Ponte, and has a row of shops 
along each side. One would not think it ever a likely 
place for a meeting of the merchants, but conditions have 
changed since this was the rich mart of Eastern commerce, and 
very likely precious wares were then stored in the huge decay- 
ing warehouses near the Rialto, and merchants from both sides 
of the canal met on its broad and spacious arch to effect their 
sales and exchanges. We passed into many narrow side 
canals overhung by lofty mouldering houses, penetrated the 
old Jewish quarter — the Ghetto — where these people, once 
proscribed, still dwell, not exclusivel)^, but did not recognize 
the " gentle Jessica" among the frowzy maidens leaning over 
the decrepit balconies, half screened by the picturesque tatters 
of probable underclothing waving from the walls. 

The tide was ebbing as we glided among these sinuous 
channels and the receding water left unromantic stenches 



273 Scenes Along the Grand Canal. 

behind, not noticeable at high tide, and we were glad to issue 
forth upon the blue lagoon to the northward, viewing with 
pleasure the long, graceful yellow line of the cemetery-wall ; 
stopping to see the Church of San Michele, built in 1466, with 
some good sculptures on its fagade. Here and at every land- 
ing we encountered the most adhesive of the beggar tribe in 
the form — always — of a tatterdemalion, shaky, watery-eyed 
old man who is lying in wait with a hooked pole to hold one's 
boat to the landing-steps. He and his function are useless, 
but he fastens upon the boat as if he were a government 
official with full powers, and no extent of prohibition or vol- 
ume of objurgation has the least effect upon him ; he takes all 
as a matter of course and never relaxes his hold until, yielding 
to his imperturbable impudence, you slip a small gratuity into 
his relaxing palm. 

As we returned homeward the declining sun flooded the 
intervening tract of tranquil water with a flow of opalescent 
light far to the eastward, and in the unreal radiance of it, floated 
or seemed to float, rising and falling in the slight pulsations 
radiating from the gondola's noiseless prow, the low lines of 
islands white with churches, to the left of us the blue Alps 
veiled in mist, and on the right, more silent and weird than 
any other thing, the strange, unreal city, in whose streets no 
sound of wheels is heard, hoary with centuries, beautiful in 
decaying grandeur, lifting, as if in mournful supplication, its 
graceful domes and campaniles to the pitiful heavens, their 
sad bells sobbing over the friendly sea. 

We were early afloat next morning under the sky of a per- 
fect day, again gliding along the Grand Canal as in a dream, 
finding new beauties of form and color everywhere, the com- 
monest things so altered by the " sea change " that nothing 
seemed " common or unclean," the comfortless, crumbling 
palaces shining like the work of enchantment ; and the imagi- 
nation in the easiest and most natural way restored them to 
their pristine beauty and filled the pillared galleries with 
jewelled ladies whose dark eyes outshine the sun, waving 
white hands of welcome to gleaming knights below, sweeping 
with swift oars to greet them, fresh home from brave wars and 
rich with the spoils of the East ; precious jewels, costly silks, 
cloth of gold, spices and perfumes. What feasting followed ! 
what revelry ! These empty halls blazing with light shining out 



Frattini in Proud Attitude. 273 

from these pointed windows, now dead to light, across the 
gleaming water ; these mournful walls flaunting with many 
colored streamers and hung with embroidered cloths of velvet 
fringed with gold ! I count him less than man whose blood 
does not stir in this scene of antique glory. 

All day long we floated and glided about, threading pas- 
sages so narrow that two boats could scarcely meet, between 
ranks of houses so tall and near together that only a long strip 
of azure sky showed above. At each of the frequent turns 
the gondolier utters a peculiar cry of warning to any boat 
likely to emerge from the hidden turn of the channel. From the 
wider canals, indeed from the narrowest, rise frequently the 
worn fronts of dilapidated palaces rich with patches of glo- 
rious colors, their sculptured water-gates still surmounted 
with grave, bearded heads of well-wrought stone, empty, for- 
lorn and desolate beyond words. 

The young people of my party desired to be photographed 
in our gondola, and so after lunch we had the felze or canopy 
put on, and were rowed across to the little island of San 
Giorgio Maggiore, where, on the landing in front of the wall 
of the old Benedictine Monastery, we found the camera of 
Signor Salviati awaiting us, and making fast the boat to a 
post, with a background of the Ducal Palace and the Piaz- 
zetta, we got what proved to be a good picture, the chief 
features in it being Frattini in proud attitude on the prow and 
the graceful gondolier poising his idle oar astern. Afterward 
we were rowed past the Giardini Pubblici — the principal, in- 
deed the only public garden, made by Napoleon in 1807, who 
demolished several old monasteries at the southern end of the 
long crescent of the Riva degli Schiavoni — to the Lido, the 
largest of the islands of the lagoons, with summer cottages 
among trees fronting the Adriatic, bluest and tranquillest of 
seas, as we looked on it from the sands much frequented by 
bathers in the season. A tramway with positively live horses 
crosses the island to the sea, and we regard these sorry hacks 
with something of curiosity born of abstinence. Thence to 
the yellow walls of the Armenian Monastery on the island of 
San Lazzaro, the peaceful home of a body of learned Armenian 
scholars engaged in printing and diffusing literature, sectarian 
and other, among the Eastern peoples of their faith. 

Nothing more tranquil and winning to the mind tired of the 
18 



274 The Armeftian Monastery. — The Brotherhood. 

world and seeking pious solitude can be imagined than these 
dim cloisters and arched halls, full of silence, rising from the 
blue water, where no breath of heated outer life with its jars 
and turmoils can penetrate. I said to the kindly, placid father 
who had shown us the library where Lord Byron, in one of his 
many moods, had studied Armenian, residing here some weeks 
among the fathers, the dim, silent chapel where they worship, 
the great stone refectory where they sit at table on stone 
benches against the walls, and the many retired apartments, 
severely simple, yet elegant from their fine proportions and 
utter cleanliness, that I almost envied him this learned seclu- 
sion. His smile was touched with sadness, I thought, as he 
only said in his pleasant voice and in the English he spoke 
brokenly well, " You would find it monotonous, I fear." He 
took us through the little garden in the court, looked out upon 
by the cloisters, well planted with many choice varieties of ex- 
otic plants, and sending for a gardener, had him cut from a 
prosperous catalpa-tree in the centre, a huge green cone burst- 
ing with rich red seeds and handed it to us with an unworldly 
■kindliness graceful beyond art. 

The brothers have a large plat of land outside the walls 
where they grow fruits and vegetables for their simple table, 
and also have possessions on the mainland near Padua, and are 
altogether a prosperous brotherhood, for which I for one am 
■thankful. We visited their printing-office, an orderly, well-ar- 
ranged establishment, where all the various work is done by 
hand in a slow, restful way, indicating no anxious waiting on the 
part of the reading world outside. We bought a copy of " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin" in Armenian and a volume of prayers in thirty- 
seven languages, and, infected with the silence, glided home- 
ward through oozy channels among hundreds of little black 
islets of mud exposed by the receding tide. 

We passed the entire evening in our boat rowing under the 
golden radiance of a full moon. The air breathed soft, and 
a barge laden with a company of singers and hung with colored 
lanterns floated down the Grand Canal, where a great number 
of boats flocked to it and surrounded it. There were two or 
•three good voices in the company, and with these for solos and 
duets and the rest for chorus, we had very satisfactory music, 
since " soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet 
harmony." One song by the best voice, a clear baritone, had 



The Interior of the Church of St. Mark. 275 

much dramatic variety in it and was supposed, as Frattini ex- 
plained, to express the varying emotions of a crew of fisher- 
men at Chioggia, a fishing village at the mouth of the lagoons, 
who, having landed with empty nets, go to a drinking-shop 
much cast down, lamenting their ill-luck, but soon recovering, 
bid each other cheer up and seek the comfort there is in a cup 
of wine. Extricating our boat from the floating mass, we 
stole into the small canals and roved about their dim, myste- 
rious channels ; all the stories I had ever read of stealthy bravos 
and dark intrigues coming back as we darted among the 
shadows. We emerged at last, by way of the Canal Paglia under 
the Bridge of Sighs — the soft wash of the gondola murmuring 
along the wails of the Ducal Palace and the gloomy founda- 
tion of the old prison — into the shimmering blue of the broad 
water in front of the Riva degli Schiavoni. 

I pass all my spare half hours either in the Church of St. 
Mark or on the Piazza among the incomparable works sur- 
rounding it. The interior of St. Mark grows in beauty as one 
becomes more familiar with it and able to separate one charm 
from the rest and consider it singly. Such extravagance of 
beauty, such opulence of charms, such accumulations of wealth 
and lavish adornments ! At the grand mass on Sunday I 
noticed how well fitted the church is for worship, receiving its 
thronging devotees in a royal way, rich and poor alike wel- 
comed to such a temple as is not on earth for costliness. 
Among the objects of especial richness, where all is rich and 
rare, I will note the high altar canopied with verd-antique, 
with an altar-piece of enamels on gold and silver thickly set 
with precious stones and of inestimable value, wrought in 
Constantinople early in the twelfth century. This is securely 
hidden behind thick sliding doors, and only shown to the gen- 
eral public on high festivals. Also the altar behind the high 
altar, with its four spiral pillars of alabaster, reputed to have 
belonged to the Temple of Solomon ; two of them so trans- 
parent that, although some eight inches in diameter, the light 
from an ignited match held behind them is seen as a spot of 
creamy light. 

But why begin to catalogue the marvels of beauty and 
grace on every hand in this church ? In the Treasury, among 
many precious things, are two candelabra by Cellini exceed- 
ing in grace and delicacy anything I have seen in bronze. I 



376 Several Fine Churches and their Works of Art. 

asked the significance of a huge, coarse, rusty knife carefully- 
placed on a rest within a glass case, and was informed that St. 
Mark, whose remains, brought from. Alexandria by Venetian 
citizens in 828 repose beneath the high altar, was done to 
death with it. It is not conceivable that so notable a church 
should be without the relics of an evangelist at least. In the 
Baptistery is a fine bronze font of the middle of the fifteenth 
century. There, too, is the fair-carven monument to the Doge 
Dandolo, and here we are shown a broad granite stone from 
Mount Tabor, on whose level face the Transfiguration occurred ! 
Nor does the wonder stop here, for below the head of John the 
Baptist on the wall is the stone on which his decapitation took 
place. 

We visited several other churches in Venice : the Gli Scalzi, 
scarcely less rich in its variety of costly marbles than San 
Marco itself ; San Giorgio Maggiore, with its beautifully car- 
ven choir-stalls; San Maria della Salute, erected in 1631 by 
Longhena, a successor of Palladio, in commemoration of the 
plague of 1630, with its ceiling-pieces of "Cain and Abel," 
"Abraham and Isaac," "David and Goliath," by Titian ; the 
Frari, where many eminent men repose. Here is Titian's 
monument, completed in 1852, elaborate and rich, from a design 
by Longhena in the seventeenth century — a noble tomb. A 
statue of St. Jerome there, by Alessandro Vittoria, is said to 
delineate the features and face of Titian in his ninety-eighth 
year. There is in this church a sweet Madonna by Giovanni 
Bellini, and another, strong and grand, by Bernardino Licinio 
da Pordenone. The Doges Francisco Foscari and Niccolo 
Tron and Giovanni Pesaro have mausoleums here, and very 
grand they are, as well as Canova's mausoleum, erected in 
1827, from his own design for that of Titian, done by his 
pupils, Martini, Ferrari, Fabris and others. But the crown of 
all is Titian's altar-piece, " The Madonna of the Pesaro Fam- 
ily ; " or, as it is called here, " The Madonna di Casa Pesaro," 
reputed almost the finest of his works. I should not rank it so 
high, but my opinion of a picture I constantly feel is of no 
consequence to any one but myself. This is a painting of 
' great majesty and beauty. 

The Church of San Giovanni e Paolo has an imposing inte- 
rior, and even more than the Frari contains the monuments of 
famous men, especially the burial-vaults of the doges whose 



Academy of Fine Arts. 277 

funeral services were always held here. We note the imposing 
tombs of Doges Pietro Mocenigo, who died in 1476 ; Michele 
Morosini, died 1382; Antonio Venier, died 1400; Pasquale 
Malipiero, died 1462 ; Michael Steno, died 1413 ; Tommaso 
Mocenigo, died 1423 ; Niccolo Marcello, died 1474 ; Giovanni 
Mocenigo, died 1485 '; Giovanni Bembo, died 1618, and many 
another of less distinguished title but great in Venetian annals, 
notably that of Marc Antonio Bragadino, died in 157 1, flayed 
alive by the barbarous Turks, as shown in a painting above 
his tomb. He it was who so stoutly defended "famed Fama- 
gosta" in Cyprus against the Turks, who, after his surrender, 
put him to so cruel a death. Beautiful exceedingly is the one to 
Andrea Vendramin, who died in 1478, by Alessandro Leopardo. 
A chapel of this fine church- — Cappella del Rosario — founded 
in 1 57 1 to commemorate the battle of Lepanto, was as clean 
burned out by a fire in 1867 as if it were only pine-wood. I 
have been surprised where we have been, both in Great Britain 
and on the Continent, at the number of castles, churches and 
palaces of massive stone whose records show them to have 
been destroyed and ruined by fire, sometimes over and over 
again. In this chapel remain only some beautiful marble 
reliefs on a portion of one wall, mutilated and blackened. 

Visited the little church of Maria Formosa on purpose to 
see the queenly St. Barbara of Palma Vecchio, and found 
there besides that worshipful creation, a " Madonna and 
Child " by Sassoferrato, and I am not sure if it does not please 
me almost beyond any of the endless Madonnas after those of 
Raphael. 

The Academy of Fine Arts is poorly located in the halls of a 
suppressed monastery, where the light is difficult and trying, 
and the gallery contains pictures of Venetian painters almost 
altogether. There are fine works of Bellini, Tintoretto, Paul 
Veronese, Palma Vecchio, and among many of note and fame, 
two whose pictures I felt much interest in, Bonifacio and Car- 
paccio. I should say I had not seen anything by Paul Veronese 
to compare with his "Jesus in the House of Levi." Titian is 
here numerously, of course, and his "John the Baptist" and 
his " Assumption" — in a bad light by the way — are creations 
of wonderful sublimity and beauty. What abounding and 
redundant life was in the blood and brain of many of these 
great old painters ! Here is the great canvas of " The En- 



278 The Arsenal. — A Model of the Bucentaur. 

tombment," on which Titian was working when death not 
unkindly took the brush from his hand at the age of ninety- 
nine years, leaving the unfinished picture to be finished by 
Palma the Younger. 

I was much interested in the Arsenal, where, within handsome 
old brick walls, the Republic during the centuries of its power 
built the redoubtable galleys and forged the warlike imple- 
ments which spread its triumphs into distant lands and over 
many seas. This is the " Sagittary" mentioned in Shake- 
spere's " Othello." There is a magnificent gateway of 1460 at 
the outer entrance, in front of which crouch four huge lions 
brought from Greece in 1687. It is said that in the height of 
her power the Republic employed sixteen thousand workmen 
here, but now only a small force is used. We found an ad- 
mirable museum here, especially rich in Oriental arms and 
costly spoils of the Turk. There are exact models of the 
Venetian galleys and a rich one of the Bucentaur, the great, 
many oared boat from whose deck the Doge annually, on 
Ascension Day, threw a ring into the Adriatic, in symbol of 
the marriage of Venice with the sea. The Bucentaur, which 
was so utterly destroyed by the French Vandals in 1796 that 
only a small portion of the richly decorated sides remains 
in the museum here, is thus described : " It was in the form 
of a galley and two hundred feet long, with two decks. 
The first of these was occupied by one hundred and sixty 
rowers, the handsomest and strongest of the fleet, who sat 
four men to each oar and there awaited orders ; forty other 
sailors completed the crew. The upper deck was divided 
lengthwise by a partition pierced with arched doorways, 
ornamented with gilded figures and covered with a roof sup- 
ported by caryatides, the whole surmounted by a canopy of 
crimson velvet embroidered with gold. Under this were 
ninety seats, and at the stern a still richer chamber for the 
Doge's throne, over which drooped the banner of St. Mark. 
The prow was double-beaked and the sides of the vessel were 
enriched with figures of Justice, Peace, Sea, Lan^, and other 
allegories and ornaments." 

It must not be supposed that because Venice is permeated 
with water-ways that it has no streets. It is honeycombed, as it 
were, with an intricate network of them, all the way from 
three to ten feet wide ; and as one might think, when on the 



Visit a Number of Palaces on the Grand Canal. 279 

water, there are no streets, from anything he can see, so, when 
losing himself in these noiseless alle3's, he might well believe 
them to be the only channels of communication between the 
different sections of the city, except for the frequent stone 
bridges by which these streets cross the many canals. As 
there are no wheeled vehicles of any sort, these narrow alleys 
— for the widest of the streets are scarcely more — quite suffice 
for the domestic traffic, and at frequent intervals all over the 
city these open into little courts or squares, called canipos, in 
the centre of which stands always the handsome stone curb 
of a well, from which the neighborhood gets its supply of fresh 
water — even now when there is a supply brought in by pipes 
from the main-land. These courts are the centres of the many 
parishes into which the city is divided, and besides the church 
there will be found in each the trades and shops needed for 
the regular supply of the wants of the poorer families crowded 
into the stories of the lofty old houses elbowing each other on 
every hand. 

We visited several of the large palaces on the Grand Canal 
and saw how dreary and unhomelike they are, with great 
rooms of stone, chilly, cheerless, dismal. When renovated, 
divided into smaller apartments, wainscoted, floored, and 
made comfortable by modern appliances for heating and light- 
ing, they will do very well for summer, but, I should say, 
dreary enough in the main, and I cannot well imagine a more 
cheerless city for a steady residence than Venice, with water 
and stone below, above and around. Baron Franchetti is now 
thoroughly making over the grand Palace Cavalli, and we were 
permitted to see his new staircase of white marble, rich with 
statues and frescoes, said to have cost two hundred thousand 
dollars of our money. He has a pretty garden with good trees 
at the side and rear and access to one of the narrow streets, 
so that he will have a homelike residence after an enormous 
outlay ; but there are not many Baron Franchettis, and Ven- 
ice is a poverty-stricken city. While its material prosperity 
seems to have sunk to its lowest point after its dissolution as 
an independent state by Napoleon in 1797, when its population 
dwindled from 200,000 to 96,000, it continued to languish under 
the hated Austrian rule. Since 1866 it has been reunited with 
Italy, and in a languidly improving way is feeling the quick- 
ened current of the new Italian life. The population in 1881 



280 The Pigeons of St Mark. 

is reported at 129,000, but with the sad comment that one- 
quarter are paupers. The Italian government has interested 
itself in the revival of several of the arts and crafts for which 
Venice was once famous, and beautiful articles are made in 
carved woods, lace and glass. We visited a manufactory of 
laces where in the factory itself and the training-school con- 
nected with it, the latter being aided by the government, some 
four thousand persons, mostly women, are employed. 

We climbed the inclined plane, mounting easily up the inside 
of the Campanile of St. Mark, some 300 feet, to " assist" at the 
sunset of an afternoon not less perfect — and I cannot give it 
higher praise — than some I recall of the Indian-summer time 
on Prairie Ronde in the early years of the State of Michigan. 
But there the opulent and gorgeous Western sky shed its glory 
of crimson and purple, gold and blue upon scenes of unsophis- 
ticated nature sadly attendant upon the dying year ; here it 
flooded, through the soft autumnal mist, the most enchanting 
works of time-worn art, and dome and tower and gilded pinna- 
cle, many a one, flashed and shone above the dull-red roofs of 
the silent city far below, in heavenly dyes, richer than Vene- 
tian galley ever fetched from the Orient. A memorable scene, 
this city rising from the broad lagoon, flashing all around it in 
the sunset. A numerous flock of pigeons has its " procreant 
cradle," likewise its roosting-places, on every "coign of van- 
tage" of the fagades of St. Mark and the Procuratie. There 
are at least two accounts of how they come to be here, where 
they have remained immemorial years. One is that Admiral 
Dandolo, while laying siege to Candia, early in the thirteenth 
century, received intelligence of value through carrier-pigeons. 
He sent them home with the news of his conquest, and the 
race of them has been tended with reverent care by the citi- 
zens ever since. Another is that as far back as the erection of 
St. Mark, in the tenth century, the sacristans of the church 
used to let loose pigeons on Palm Sunday for the people to 
scramble for in the Piazza. Some escaped and took refuge 
in the roof of the church, and gradually taking on a sort of 
sacred character, increased and multiplied, and became the 
pets we now behold them. Whichever account of their origin 
may be true or not true, here the pigeons are in great force, 
crop-full, tame, plump and impudent burghers, living on the 
plentiful grain and polenta fed them daily by visitors like our- 



The Ducal Palace. 281 

selves and also from a fund left by a pious lady for their 
maintenance. The oily rascals are like the world in general : 
they fawn and cluster around and on you until your bag is 
empty, and then all flutter and waddle away to the fresh sup- 
plies. 

In the evenings an excellent band plays in the well-lighted 
Piazza with sweetness and vivacity, and a numerous concourse 
of citizens of all degrees throngs the arcades of the Procuratie, 
promenading slowly and in silent decorum in the glare of the 
bright shop-windows or in the freer spaces of the Piazza, or 
standing in mildly chatting groups, or seated before little tables 
in front of the Cafe Florian over little cups of coffee. The 
only color and picturesqueness is furnished by the lively uni- 
forms of the handsome officers here and there, all others, men 
and women, old and young, being clothed in dull, ill-fitting 
garments of styles originated in Paris or London, and getting 
a well-defined but scarcely describable derangement and un- 
shapeliness in the translation from the art centres to the backs 
of people who in the article of dress are in the transition state. 
The movement of the beaux and dandies would seem to be of 
the most aimless and vapid nature, and milder or more in- 
offensive young men to look at I have never seen than these 
gilded youths of Venice, with their pointed shoes, little canes 
and ill-fitting trousers, as they stroll aimlessly up and down 
in couples or sit at coffee with a far-away look of gentle imbe- 
cility. I see few handsome or even pretty faces among the 
women. Once in a while a maid or young matron moves by, 
of free, graceful step, and olive features lighted by glorious 
dark eyes of dangerous sparkle, with hair raven in darkness 
or of that peculiar rich auburn once an attribute of the best 
Venetian beauty ; but these visions are rare, and certainly on 
the streets and watery ways of Venice, by daylight or gaslight, 
one sees very few attractive women. 

The Ducal Palace, so beautifully conspicuous at the corner 
of the Riva and Piazzetta, still preserves within its lofty and 
imposing walls the magnificent apartments where the affairs 
of the government were transacted during those centuries of 
the Republic's highest pride and power. The Senate Cham- 
ber, with its dull-red raised seats on two sides and the Doge's 
gilded chair at one end, its lofty ceilings heavy with gold and 
alive with the frescoes of Tintoretto, is a most noble chamber. 



283 Chamber of the Council of Ten. 

and realizes one's conception of a hall fit for such an assem- 
blage. So of the other famous rooms related to this — that of 
the Council of Ten, the Great Council Hall, the room of the 
three inquisitors of the Republic, into the antechamber of 
which is an opening from the hall at the head of the staircase 
where in the old time a bronze lion's head was set, into whose 
open jaws any one might thrust anonymous charges against 
whomsoever he saw fit ; such secret accusation being received 
and acted on in the same mysterious manner, the victim never 
knowing his accuser. The chamber of the Council of Ten is 
connected with some cells by way of a narrow passage ; these 
cells or dungeons, as they are called, being large, dry cham- 
bers — well enough as dungeons, except for an almost total 
lack of light. Apart from this — and certainly it is a drawback 
to lie and sit and stand in darkness — these cells are more 
roomy and comfortable than those of our prisons, and vast- 
ly more so than the dens shown us as used for a like purpose 
in Ireland, Scotland, England, and elsewhere on the Continent, 
in the strongholds of four hundred years ago. This narrow 
passage is continued to the Bridge of Sighs, where it is divided 
into two passages crossing this bridge to the prison on the 
other side of the Canal Paglia. This covered stone way from 
the palace to the prison is some 15 feet long, and connects the 
upper stories of these structures about 30 feet above the water. 
It was built much later than these, for the convenience, no 
doubt, of bringing prisoners before the judicial tribunals in the 
Doge's Palace for trial, whence they were returned by the same 
way ; and there is no doubt that the pitiful and tragical no- 
tions connected with it are largely the sentimental creations 
of poetical romancers. 

One morning the thunder of a salute from an Italian man- 
of-war lying just off the Riva, to the left of our hotel, shook 
the windows, advising us that the Emperor and Empress of 
Germany, who were in Constantinople the week after we left 
that city, were approaching Venice, where the Emperor is to 
land and proceed by rail to Mensa, to hunt with the King of 
Italy for a day ; and shortly before noon the royal yacht 
" Hohenzollern" steamed grandly up the tortuous channel and 
cast anchor just in front of our balcony, some thirty rods 
away. We took to our gondola, and in a minute were in the 
midst of a swarm of like craft lying in wait for a glimpse of 



Arrival of the German Einperor and Empress. 283 

the royal couple. Our desires were soon gratified, as they 
appeared in company on the promenade-deck in full view, and 
bringing to bear on their august features the excellent field- 
glass purchased in Edinburgh, I surveyed them long and 
well with the unconstraint of a proud native of a land 
where all are born to the purple. The Empress is shown 
handsome and fair in the photographs one sees of her every- 
where, and so she may have been in girlhood and in the earlier 
years of her wedded life, but now the lines of face and form 
have coarsened, and she has the heavy German countenance, 
and can no longer be called more than a comfortable, pleasant- 
looking matron without distinction in look or bearing. The 
Emperor was in a jovial mood, and frequently taking his cigar 
from his lips, laughed heartily at remarks addressed to him by 
the little group of officers near by, or haply at his own wit, 
as great kings are said to do. He has strong, cold features, 
bold, clear, earnest eyes, and a bearing of mingled dignity and 
haughtiness which he does not find it easy to repress — alto- 
gether a young man of power and clear intelligence and a 
strong will, a young man of mark and consequence, likely to 
be heard from in this world's business. After their majesties 
had dined and recreated themselves down below out of the 
sight of men for a good hour or more, with tall, fine 
veterans and young officers pacing the decks in watchful 
attendance, and the world of us below paddling round and 
round the steamer, fearful something would transpire without 
our knowledge, the State gondolas under direction of the city 
authorities appeared, and a procession was arranged for the 
Grand Canal, down which the Emperor was to pass to the 
railway-station. The largest of these is a long, gilded barge, 
built to succeed the Bucentaur, with high prow and a plat- 
form astern enclosed in curtains of colored silks, forming a 
pavilion carpeted with red cloth, where two gilded chairs are 
placed, and manned by twenty rowers. The three other State 
boats are large gondolas covered with gilding, and, like the 
barge, richly carved, all manned b}^ gondoliers in the costumes 
of four centuries ago, each crew in different colors of blue and 
red and gold, charmingly picturesque. 

We moved out of the wilderness of boats and rowed down 
the Grand Canal in advance of the cortege, and taking a posi- 
tion by one of the posts at the side of the Palace Foscari, 



384 An Imposing Pageaiit. 

waited for the procession, which swept by us in a torrent of 
swift confusion, the great barge towed by a steam-launch, so 
that the long white oars of the idle rowers of it were held 
upright, ten on each side, and under the canopy the Emperor 
and Empress sat side by side, the splendid gondolas of State, 
urged by the utmost graceful exertions of picked rowers, 
close following in its wake, all shining like burnished gold in 
the westering sun, the oars dripping silver, the swaying forms 
of the rowers gleaming in their liveries of antique fashion and 
gorgeous dyes, contrasting richly with the low, black gondolas 
of the people pressing onward beside and behind them ; the 
hurrying pageant of a dream. We took a narrow canal 
cutting off a bend in the Grand Canal, emerging again to 
see the procession sweep by once more and land the Emperor at 
the steps of the railway-station. The Rialto and the banks of 
the canal, wherever a human foot could be set, were crowded 
with spectators, and it seemed to me, as I looked upon the 
sea of faces turned to the spectacle, that nowhere had I ever 
seen countenances wearing in the mass an expression so 
squalid, worn and despairing. 

In the evening the Piazza was illuminated by increasing the 
number of gas-jets on the handsome branching lamp-posts in 
and around the Piazza, and to the music of two excellent 
bands, playing alternately, the people moved up and down as 
on other evenings, but more numerously, and in the same 
politely gentle, quiet way. They seem to have gone to decay 
and mournful hopelessness, like the crumbling, tattered, 
beautiful city wherein they survive like reminiscences of the 
past, ghosts of ancient reality. Repairs have been going on 
for a quarter of a century about the Palace of the Doges, 
chiefly in its substructure, which had given tokens of weaken- 
ing, and during that time a high board fence had concealed a 
very considerable portion of the south facade. The restora- 
tion being well-nigh complete, the Emperor's visit was made 
the occasion of removing this barrier, so that we had the satis- 
faction of seeing this unrivalled building in its full beauty of 
outline. 

The Empress returned to the steamer after setting her 
imperial consort down at the railway-station, and on the 
second night of her sta}^ here the long crescent line of the water- 
front from the entrance of the Grand Canal to the Public 



On the Way to Florence. 285 

Gardens was illuminated at intervals with Bengal lights of 
red, green and white — the national colors — flashing weirdly 
upon the fastastic architecture of the shore and dying away 
into darkness far out upon the lagoon ; the tall campanile of 
San Giorgio on the island opposite glowing redly from its 
bell-tower, as if a conflagration raged within its massive walls. 
But the finest effect of the illumination was furnished by the 
royal yacht of the imperial guests, which blazed with a line of 
close-set electric lights from stem to stern and from these 
upward to the top of the mainmast, flooding all the distance 
between itself and the shore with liquid gold, across which 
the dark gondolas glided silently, like pleasing phantoms. 
Near midnight the Empress was rowed to the station with the 
blare of a military band and a sea of flaring torches, and next 
day the " Hohenzollern" quietly put to sea, Venice resumed 
its customary ways, and on the following day, November 15th, 
at 2 P.M., we regretfully left this strange and beautiful city 
for Florence, two hundred miles distant, where we arrived 
at 10 P.M. to find spacious and comfortable rooms, cheerful 
with open fires, in the Hotel New York. 

Our way from Venice lay over a pleasant country, level and 
fertile, but much of it subject to destructive overflow from 
several very considerable mountain-streams, which bring 
down a vast quantity of sand and spread it over large tracts 
of plain, to the great loss of the farmers between Venice and 
Ferrara. We pass through Padua, Rovigo, Bologna and many 
villages with picturesque remains of many centuries, all show- 
ing fair in such autumnal sunshine as used to fill the air and 
tinge with the vague and undefinable tints of romance the 
silent aspect of Prairie Ronde and its grandly solemn sur- 
rounding forests. 

We dmed at Bologna, where Frattini urged us to try the 
celebrated sausages which take their name from this city, 
where they have for a long period borne a high reputation. 
We found them excellent, and of fine and delicate flavor. We 
were sorry to cross the Apennines after dark and miss the 
scenery of them. The highest point attained by the road is 
at Molina del Pallone, a little more than 2000 feet above the 
sea-level. Five miles on, a little this side of the village of 
Pracchia, the train crosses the water-shed of the Adriatic and 
that broad indentatio.i of the Mediterranean called by the 



286 Florence. 

ancient Romans the Tyrrhenium Mare, through a tunnel 
nearly two miles long, and entering the valley of the Ombrone, 
crosses that streanfi by a lofty viaduct and passes through no 
less than twenty tunnels before reaching Pistoja, a distance of 
only ten miles. This little village is said to have given its 
name to the pistol. Near Prato, ten miles from Florence, is the 
quarry of serpentine known as " Marmo verde di Prato." 

I had intended to pass not less than three weeks on the 
lakes and among the old towns in the north of Italy before 
coming to Florence, but the season is so far advanced that 
the nights are cold, and we did not care to expose ourselves 
to the chances of frequent changes of hotels, which are in 
Italy of massive stone, and unless one's apartments are well 
warmed beforehand — something the Italian in the towns off 
the regular lines of travel very poorly comprehends — are chilly 
and cheerless to a degree that not only affects one's pleasure 
and comfort, but even subjects the health to risk ; so, as we 
wish to see the lakes, of which we had a charming bit of expe- 
rience last summer when we came over from Switzerland to 
Lugano and Maggiore, at their best, and to walk the solemn 
streets of dozing old cities like Mantua and Ravenna when 
they shall have all the advantage they may derive from blue 
skies flooded with sunshine and the flowery earth smiling 
under them, we must pass them by, trusting a more convenient 
season may occur to us before we leave for home, and for the 
winter limit ourselves to the larger cities, journeying south- 
ward and along the Riviera as the winter grows more rigor- 
ous. 

November 6. — We have now been three weeks in Florence, 
during which time I have not made an entry in my note-book, 
having given myself over to the luxury of idleness and indo- 
lent sight-seeing, and enjoying careless rest after more than 
half a year of constant travel and observation, until the very 
vision became benumbed and unreceptive. Indeed, it seemed 
to me clear that I would at least ease myself to the extent of 
discontinuing these fragmentary and thoroughly unsatisfac- 
tory memoranda of travel, necessarily made in snatches of 
time when weariness demanded rest or agreeable distractions 
invited attention. But as this is my first and likely to be my 
only visit to foreign lands, and my memory, never greatly to 
be depended on, is not likely to improve with age, as I begin 



A Brief History of the City. 287 

to be aware already, I would like to record so much of my 
impressions as in such years as may remain to me will help 
recall in part the scenes and objects which I have enjoyed 
with such relish when among them. Therefore I will keep on, 
after my poor fashion, and set down in a hasty, desultory 
and ill-informed way what I can of the novel abundance on 
every hand in these lands of the old world — nowhere of higher 
interest to a citizen of the new than in this fair city of Tus- 
cany. 

Florence has a population of some 150,000. This was never 
greater, and during those centuries when its splendor was 
brightest the number of its inhabitants probably did not 
reach 100,000, and in 1864, when it supplanted Turin as the 
capital of Italy — an honor it held for four years, when the seat 
of government was removed to Rome — its population was 
nearly 120,000, so that the prodigious debt it incurred for im- 
provements consequent on the brief honor of being the capital 
has not hindered its proper growth, and it is prosperous even 
in the modern sense. Although it was founded in the century 
before Christ and became a place of importance under Roman 
rule, since it lay in the track of the barbarian hordes from 
the north it was often laid waste by them in their incursions 
into Italy during the dark ages, so that only very scanty 
traces remain of its early existence, and the Florence known 
in history really dates from the early years of the eleventh 
century, when the city began to emerge from obscurity and 
directly entered upon that renowed career which raised it to 
the foremost position in political affairs, in the sciences and 
arts, a position it kept more continuously and with more brill- 
iant results than any city with whose history I am at all 
acquainted. No other city can show a list of so distinguished 
names in the provinces of art, and by a singular good fortune the 
works they wrought have been largely spared by the changes 
of time and the spoliations of conquest and are still here to be 
seen and admired. I shall not try to follow its history during 
those turbulent ages when war was the business of nations 
and the powerful preyed on the weak, nor speak of those 
internal factions of Guelph and Ghibelline, White and Black, 
led by powerful rival houses and stained by dark and bloody 
deeds of brawls and intrigues and poisonings and banish- 
ments, as either party gained the upper hand. All these be- 



288 The Architecture of Florence. 

long to the history of every city in Europe during many cen- 
turies after the decay of the Roman Empire. But the peculiar 
good fortune of Florence was that its rulers, conspicuously 
those of the family of the Medici, fostered learning and art 
and preserved their fruits, so that it is now a vast storehouse 
of the most beautiful and precious things. 

The city lies pleasantly on both sides of the Arno, ordinarily 
flowing languidly between high walls of solid masonry, and 
here some 300 feet wide. F'our old stone bridges cross it at 
short intervals, the most important and picturesque being the 
Ponte Vecchio, or Jeweller's Bridge, lined on both sides by 
little shops, chiefly of jewelry, clinging to its sides like irregu- 
lar rows of marten-houses built by some kindly proprietor 
and stuck under the eaves of an old barn in New England. 
The Arno is easily swollen by sudden and heavy rains, and 
after a day during which considerable had fallen I heard at 
midnight, in our apartment fronting the Lungarno, close by 
the entrance to the Ponte alia Carraja — the bridge lowest 
down the stream — a heavy, sullen roar of water, and in the 
morning looked out on a full, swift current yellow with earthy 
matter. It soon spent its force and resumed its languid shal- 
lowness, even exposing patches of its sandy bed in places, its 
surface of a dull blue or green in the varying light. 

The level valley of the Arno is not of great width, and on 
the southern side a long, broken continuation of a lesser 
range of the Apennines runs almost parallel to it near at 
hand, furnishing, in its intersecting valleys and gentle slopes 
and sharp projections, most charming suburbs studded with 
old villas enclosed in high yellow walls, above which rise 
ancient trees, long ranges of monastic enclosures, and high up 
little clustering villages, with many an old tower and gray 
campanile contrasting with the green of many a tall cypress 
grove and harmonizing with the olive and the vine. 

Architecturally Florence presents a more uniform appear- 
ance in its ancient and modern houses than the cities we have 
visited elsewhere, because the buildings erected for a century 
back and those now building are in the same simple, massive 
style as those of the early Renaissance, when the Roman style 
of palaces and private dwellings began to be modified by the 
native architects and forms introduced which still continue, 
so that the old and new blend harmoniously and the city 



The New Palaces Along the Lungarno. 2S9 

seems built after one plan. The new palaces, as all the great 
houses of the wealthy are called along the Lungarno, are pretty 
much the same in external form as those built four hundred 
years ago. The ordinary houses are lofty, with heavy walls 
of granite or painted stucco on brick, mostly in dull yellow or 
gray, and with fronts so plain as to present an almost gloomy 
aspect under skies less bright, in air less transparent than 
exist here. 

The city is thoroughly well built, and would be thoroughly 
cheerful except for the very narrow streets of the old and 
principal portions. These, as in all ancient towns, seem to 
have been planned with a view to defence from invasions, as 
before the' invention of artiller}^ they could be held by a small 
force opposing and by hurling missiles from the lofty upper 
stories. There are no sideways in most of these old streets, 
a stone pavement extends from wall to wall, with little more 
than room for two carriages to meet, foot-passengers being 
obliged to save themselves as they can by standing against 
the walls or dodging into doorways. The houses on such 
streets — and a good part of the city is occupied by them — do 
not satisfy modern notions of comfortable dwellings with the 
light so greatly shut out. 

The number of palaces built by the ruling and influential 
families during the middle ages is something prodigious. These 
are really castles, although built in the form of a square and 
mostly without towers. A famous one among many is the 
Pitti, designed and begun in 1440 by Brunelleschi, the famous 
architect who built the dome of the Cathedral. Luca Pitti, 
who ordered this work, was the powerful rival of the Medici 
family, whom he proposed to surpass by erecting the grandest 
palace yet built by a private citizen. He conspired against 
Piero de' Medici in 1466, lost his power and influence, and the 
palace stood unfinished until the middle of the next century, 
when it came into the possession of the Medici family through 
Eleanora, wife of Duke Cosimo I., who completed it. It is of 
extraordinary size, massiveness and interior magnificence. 
The huge unfinished blocks of stone in the lower story give it 
a grim aspect, but its just proportions and noble simplicity 
are very striking. The central part is 350 feet long, the whole 
fa9ade 660 feet long, and the height 121 feet. The lofty wings 
enclose a grand court. It is connected with the charming 
19 



290 The Pitti Palace. 

Boboli Gardens extending up the hill-side in terraces, at the 
entrance a singular grotto designed by Michael Angelo, and 
in the middle an open space surrounded by stone seats, where 
the gay Medician Court was wont to hold its festivities. There 
is a handsome fountain, an Egyptian obelisk brought from 
Rome, an ancient basin of gray granite 21 by 15 feet, and at 
the top of the ascent a Basin of Neptune with a statue of that 
god by Lorenzi, and a statue of Abundance by John of 
Bologna. There are well planted and kept walks and points 
where charming views are seen of the city below, and the 
whole spot is exceedingly lovely. 

The Pitti Palace has been the residence of the reigning 
sovereign since the sixteenth century, and is that of King 
Humbert when in Florence, and the royal apartments are 
filled with exquisite furniture and works of art. We have not 
found so stately and magnificent apartments in any palace in 
any country as in this, not only those used by the sovereign, 
but also those which constitute the great and far-famed Picture 
Gallery of the Pitti, where the works of the great masters are 
shown on walls and under ceilings vying with themselves in 
sumptuousness of form and color. In the Silver Chamber of 
the palace among the royal plate are a dozen gold platters 
with exquisite designs in relief by Benvenuto Cellini, and 
a bronze crucifix by John of Bologna, whereon the face 
of the dying Christ is inexpressibly tender. Another adver- 
sary of the Medici, Filippo Strozzi, built a little later another 
of these enormous palatial strongholds near the Piazza San 
Trinita, an imposing structure of stone in the perfected Flor- 
entine style, 105 feet high. It has on the corners wrought-iron 
lanterns finely chased, and around the sides are rings for sup- 
porting banners and torch-holders similarly wrought b}^ 
Caparra, and a fine court. I mention these out of a vast 
number not much less imposing, whose founders, long since 
in dust and their families extinct, ranged in opposing factions 
as Guelph and Ghibelline, filled these narrow streets with brawl 
and revel. I must note the imposing Palazzo Vecchio, built 
in 1300 by the great architect Arnolfo, with its battlements 
and tower 308 feet high, originally the seat of the Signoria 
or Government of Florence, later the residence of Cosimo I., 
and now used as a town hall. It has a fine court, in the centre 



The Statuary in the Tribuna of the Uffizi. 291 

of which is a basin of porphyry with an exquisite figure of a 
boy with a fish by Verrochio. 

We have passed all the hours of daylight for a week in the two 
great picture galleries of the Uffizi and Pitti, which are really 
one, as they are connected by a covered passage crossing the 
Arno above the Ponte Vecchio. I cannot undertake a descrip- 
tion of the treasures of art gathered here, begun by the Medici 
and augmented by subsequent rulers and magnates of the city 
until the collection in rank and value stands as one of the first 
in the world. In one beautiful room of the Uffizi known as 
the Tribuna, for instance, are to be seen with ever-growing 
admiration these objects in sculpture : 

"The Venus of Medici," by the Athenian Cleomenes, found 
in Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, called the most perfect specimen 
of the sculptor's art in existence, and lauded to the skies by a 
long line of poets and novelists and admiring critics. Haw- 
thorne says of it, " A being that lives to gladden the world, in- 
capable of decay or death ;" the poet Rogers styles it, " Venus 
herself, who when she left the skies came hither ;" and the all 
too susceptible Byron wrote, 

"The goddess loves in stone, and fills 
The air around with beauty ; we inhale 
The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils 
^ Part of its immortality ; the veil 

Of heaven is half undrawn ; . . . 

We gaze and turn away, and know not where, 
Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart 
Reels with its fulness. ..." 

While I cannot feel swayed to any such extent, I am sufficiently 
susceptible and appreciative to recognize the charming pres- 
ence of a form of perfect womanhood, and nothing more. Its 
height is four feet and seven inches. The right arm and lower 
half of the left are modern and inferior to the rest. 

"The Wrestlers." A group of two athletes, one of whom 
has thrown the other, and in the struggle to keep him down 
the muscles of both are in such wonderful representation of 
activity and strain as to cause this to be ranked as one of the 
best specimens of ancient Greek sculpture. 

" The Dancing Faun," with head and arms renewed by 
Michael Angelo, the nude figure showing such perfection of 



292 Some of the Paintings. 

anatomy as to place it in the best epoch of ancient sculpture, 
and cause it to be attributed to Praxiteles. 

'' The Little Apollo," so called to distinguish it from the 
Apollo Belvedere in Rome, exceedingly fine and graceful, and 
so analogous in style to the Venus as to cause it to be thought 
the work of Cleomenes. 

" The Arrotino" (" The Whetter"), found at Rome in the 
fourteenth century and brought to Florence in 1677, It is the 
nude figure of a man bent over a stone on which he is whet- 
ting a hooked knife, with his strong face looking up in earnest 
attention. There are several conjectures as to who is intended 
by this statue, one of which is that it is the slave who dis- 
covered the plot of Brutus' sons in respect to Tarquin ; an- 
other that he revealed the conspiracy of Catiline against the 
Roman Republic ; but the best opinion is said by the curator 
of the gallery to be that it is the Scythian to whom Apollo 
gave the order to flay Marsyas for his temerity in boasting 
that he rivalled that god in music. Whoever he may be, this 
statue is to me the most remarkable and perfect in form and 
expression of the famous marbles in the Tribuna. 

In painting, omitting several which do not appeal to my 
feelings, there are in this one room these : 

Titian's "Venus," the world-known figure of that goddess 
lying naked on a bed. There is certainly nothing of the 
celestial about her, and I fail to recognize in this quite earthly 
form the perfection of female beauty, but the coloring is such 
as few but Titian can give to the human flesh. 

" Madonna," by Andrea del Sarto, whose pictures I always 
admire, and this one of his best. 

" The Holy Virgin," by Guido Reni. 

"The Samian Sibyl," by Guercino, called Barbieri. 

" Jean de Monfort," by Van Dyck. 

Another " Venus" by Titian, much like the other more 
famous one in position and execution. 

" After the Flight into Egypt," by Correggio, not a great 
picture as it seems to me, and so inferior to his famous 
and beautiful one, also here, of the " Holy Virgin Ador- 
ing her Child," that I do not wonder its authenticity is ques- 
tioned. 

" Portrait of a Young Woman," by Raphael, a sweet pic- 
ture. 



Fatuous Masters. 293 

" The Holy Virgin and Two Saints," by Perugino, a noble 
picture. 

The well-known " Fornarina" of Raphael. I return to this 
wonderful face over and over again. I have never seen or 
expect to see again such an expression of deep, subtle, glowing, 
tempting, consuming sensuality as glows far within those dark 
eyes, whose steadfast gaze burns into the soul. And beside 
her, attributed to the same unrivalled master, the sweet and 
pure " Virgin of the Well," who is depicted sitting and holding 
her Divine Child, while the young St. John, standing at her 
right side, is holding before them a paper on which are the 
words " Ecce Agnus," etc. Near by also is the same painter's 
"The Virgin of the Goldfinch," so named from the bird which 
the young St. John is offering Jesus to caress ; and his great 
picture of "St. John in the Desert," a full figure, and said to 
be the only painting by Raphael on canvas, all the others being 
on wood. The bold, enthusiastic prophet is here shown as a 
fiery youth of say fourteen years, vigorous and glowing with 
health, standing in a desert country, pointing with his right 
hand to a slender cross fastened to a tree close by. Full-length 
figures of the prophets Isaiah and Job, noble and impressive. 

Raphael's portrait of Pope Julius II., most vigorous, clear 
and rich in color. 

" Holy Family and St. Catharine," by Paul Veronese. 

"The Holy Family," by Michael Angelo. This painting 
is held most precious, but it does not please me either in com- 
position or color. This is heresy, and will at once dispose of 
me in the opinion of all true lovers of art. 

"Hercules between Virtue and Vice," by Rubens. 

" The Adoration of the Kings," by Albrecht Diirer. 

"The Holy Virgin and Child," by Giulio Romano — sweet 
and graceful. 

" Eleazar and Rebecca," by Caracci. 

To what good end do I catalogue the treasures in this one 
room with feeble comment when seven miles of stately apart- 
ments with their connecting passages are opulent with can- 
vases almost equally famous with those I mention ? There are 
many of wonderful beauty signed with such names as Al- 
brecht Diirer, Salvator Rosa, Tintoretto, Titian, Fra Barto- 
lommeo, Frans Porbus, Rubens, Rembrandt, Cigoli, Del 
Sarto, Van Dyck, Palma Vecchio, Bronzino, Perugino, Guido 



294 Rare Objects of Antiquity. 

Reni, Pordenone, Carlo Dolci, Murillo, Raphael, whose Holy 
Family, styled " Impannata," lights up the Salle de Mars in 
the Pitti with an expression composed of that of the Virgin in 
the Tribuna and that of the Virgin seated in the Salle de 
Saturne, known to all the world by its reproduction in all 
known forms of copying. The Virgin wears the same aspect 
as in the " Madonna del Sisto" in the Dresden Gallery. Let me 
add the names of Michael Angelo, represented by his " Fates," 
a strange and powerful picture showing the three Parcae spin- 
ning and clipping the thread of human life ; Ribera, Leonardo 
da Vinci, Giorgione, Dossi, Domenichino, Bassano del Piombo, 
Pontormo, Velasquez, Baroccio, Holbein, Filippo Lippi, Sir 
Peter Lely, who is represented by a portrait of Oliver Crom- 
well. This portrait, the story is, was sent to the then Grand 
Duke of Tuscany with a protest against the persecution of the 
Protestants in his dominions, and an intimation that he whose 
portrait went with the protest was alive and able and of a dis- 
position to avenge the wrongs of his co-religionists. I must 
note that other beautiful and sweet Virgin of Raphael known 
as the " Madonna del Gran-Duca," and the so sweet "Virgin 
in Sorrow" by Sassoferrato, one of the most exquisite concep- 
tions of the Mater Dolorosa ever given to canvas. 

In the great corridors of the Uflfizi, whose ceilings are 
enriched with arabesques by Poccetti in 1581, of so exquisite 
patterns that artists come to take bits of it for precious studies, 
are rare objects of antiquity, busts and statues, sarcophagi and 
beautiful Roman urns and altars. Among these are authentic 
busts of Julius and Augustus Caesar, Livia, Marcus Agrippa, 
Julia, daughter of Augustus ; Tiberius, Antonia, mother of 
Claudius and daughter of Marc Antony, and Octavia, sister of 
Augustus ; Agrippina, wife of Germanicus and mother of 
Caligula ; Caligula himself, bearing all the marks of the beast 
he was ; Messalina, Claudius, Nero and his wife Poppaea, of 
much beauty ; another of Nero in his innocent and fair child- 
hood ; Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasianus, Titus — a noble 
marble showing the greatness of his soul ; Domitian, Nerva, 
Trajan — three of him, all fine — Plotina, his wife ; Adrian — 
Sabina, his wife ; Antoninus Pius — Faustina, his mother, 
Galerius, his young son ; Marcus Aurelius, his wife Faustina 
and their young son, Annius Verus, who died at seven years, 
and equally beautiful with that of the young Nero, Commodus, 



The Marble Sarcophagi. 295 

whose busts are said to be rare, because the Senate ordered 
them all to be destroyed that his memory might be effaced ; 
Crispena, his wife ; Severus ; Caracalla — Plautilla, his wife ; 
Heliogabalus, Maximinus, the giant emperor whom the histo- 
rians state to have been 8 feet 2 inches in height ; Gallienus, 
Constantine the Great. These are vouched for as authentic 
by'the directors of the Uffizi, and I am careful to enumerate 
them, as they afforded me a pleasure I have craved from my 
school-days— that of seeing contemporaneous portrait busts of 
the long line of Roman emperors. I had not supposed so 
many of these to be in existence as I find here. 

Deeply interesting are the marble sarcophagi carved all over 
into pictures in relief of scenes from the Greek and Roman 
mythology and fable. There is one of the " Rape of Proser- 
pine," full of figures incident to the scene ; another of Hippo- 
lytus hunting a wild boar ; and divided from this by the pillar 
of a gate a scene delineating his temptation, with Phaedra, 
and her attendant maidens and young Cupid before her with 
torch and quiver. Still another shows the labors of Hercules, 
crowded with eight stirring scenes of them, the killing of the 
Nemean lion, the fight with the hydra of Leona. In the third 
he bears the wild boar of Erymanthus on his shoulder ; in the 
fourth the naked hero grasps the horns of the Arcadian hind ; 
in the fifth he darts his arrows against the Stymphalides ; in 
the sixth, naked and with his club, he is in the act of taking 
away her girdle from the waist of Hippolyte, the queen of the 
Amazons. Next he is seen clad in his lion-skin, his right hand 
raised and his left grasping his club. Above his left shoulder 
a spring of water is falling from a rock. This represents the 
cleansing of the Augean stables. The last group represents 
the hero vanquishing the Marathonean bull. Another repre- 
sents the triumphs of Bacchus, a throng of chained slaves, 
Ariadne's chariot drawn by tigers, that of Bacchus by cen- 
taurs, Victory preceding, and cupids, fauns and maenades 
following. Still another depicts the fall of Phaeton from the 
chariot of the Sun headlong into the Eridanus, with his sisters, 
the Heliades, changed into poplars. On the back of this 
sarcophagus in shallow bas-relief is shown a race in a circus, 
with the names of the charioteers taking part in it : Liber, 
Polyphemus, Trofimion, Entyones, and the names of their 
chariots, Libyo, Jubilatore, Dicatesyne, Engranmo. The mar- 



296 The Boccaccio Villa. — Galileo. 

ble altars too, of exquisite forms, and sides sculptured in 
scenes from the old mythology, interested me greatly. 

On fine afternoons we drive in the Cascine, a handsome park 
below the city lying along the Arno, well laid out in avenues 
planted with large trees, agreeable but not remarkable, nor 
equal in picturesqueness to many other drives in the neighbor- 
hood. Far more interesting is the drive up to Fiesole on a 
road winding among fair villa grounds enclosed in high yel- 
lowish walls, on whose tops flourish grass and violets and 
roses, to the Cathedral on the height, with its campanile domi- 
nating the spacious Piazza, with a fragment of the ancient 
Etruscan wall near by, and an ancient theatre with its sixteen 
tiers of semicircular stone seats and marks of the old stage 
facing them. A little below the Franciscan Monastery, which 
occupies the site of the old Acropolis of Faesulae from a plateau 
in front of a venerable church on the spot where a heathen 
temple once stood, is an extensive view of the valley of the 
Arno, with distant mountains and many white villages far and 
near and Florence itself below, its dull red roofs and domes 
and belfries and towers showing fair in the slant afternoon 
sunshine. Descending, we pass the attractive pile of Badia di 
Fiesole, a monastic structure by Brunelleschi, and lower down 
still another, that of the Monastery St. Salvi, of the order of 
Vallombrosa, dating back to 1080. Among the charming 
villas is to be noted that of Palmieri, where Boccaccio laid the 
scene of the "Decameron," and that company of gallants and 
fair ladies passed the time, when the plague raged in the 
city below, in telling merr)^ tales "good against infection" — 
high-bosomed dames with kindling eyes of lustrous fire, whose 
descendants still walk the streets of Florence with more mod- 
est mien, but with free, elastic step and dignity of manner, so 
that watching them on the promenades, matrons and maids, 
one finds beauty of person the rule and ugliness so much the 
exception that in no city, unless possibly in Vienna, have I 
noticed so many handsome women. The grounds of the old 
Boccaccio Villa are still extremely beautiful — terrace above 
terrace, where fountains play, and a green enamelled meadow 
beset with pleasant trees sloping softly down to a pretty bab- 
bling brook. 

One afternoon we crossed the Arno and drove up to the old 
square tower, in excellent preservation, where Galileo first 



Piazza della Signoria. 297 

observed the heavens with his so-called telescope, still pre- 
served among other interesting mementos of him in an upper 
room of the tower. The instrument he found suflficient to 
enable him to demonstrate that the earth moves about the sun 
is no more than we call a spy-glass, and with its four lengths 
shut together is about a foot long. On the wall is hung a copy 
of an " Index Expurgatorius" issued by the Inquisition, for- 
bidding his little book announcing his discovery to be printed 
or read under heavy pains and penalties. Did not Joshua 
command the sun to stand still ? Then it must be the sun 
which moves, and the prison stands open to the blasphemer 
who shall gainsay it. 

I often walk from my hotel up the Lungarno to the Ponte 
Vecchio, admiring along the way the singular irregularity of 
the houses on the opposite bank of the river. Nowhere, not 
even in Nuremberg, does one see such a picturesque variety 
of front and roof in faded parti-colors, especially between the 
bridges of Trinita and Vecchio. Turning sharply to the left 
there one strolls along a noble colonnade set on each side 
with statues of men who have made Florence famous, and 
through it to the Piazza della Signoria, the old Forum of the 
Republic, the centre of its eager activity, and still one of the 
busiest and most interesting spots in the city. Here the 
excitable populace used to run tumultuously together when the 
" cow lowed," as the tolling of the bell La Vacca, or " the cow," 
was called ; and from a stone platform on the north side of the 
Palazzo Vecchio della Signoria, now removed, the prior and 
judges sat to witness the burning of Savonarola, May 23d, 
1498. At one angle of this platform stands the famous " Mar- 
zocco" of Donatello, a marble lion with a name of unknown 
origin, and near by is the great fountain of Neptune by Bar- 
tolommeo Ammanati (1571), whose design was preferred to 
that of John of Bologna, who made the equestrian statue of 
Cosimo I., close by, in 1594. On the south side of the Piazza 
is the beautiful Loggia di Lanzi, consisting of three open 
arches with three pillars enclosing a platform reached by six 
steps. In this open loggia, begun in 1336, are placed many 
noble statues in marble and bronze, and among the latter the 
" Perseus" of Benvenuto Cellini, cast in 1545, and I think the 
most beautiful and impressive of all the statues I have seen. 
I admire all the work in various kinds I have seen of this won- 



298 The Cathedral Santa Maj-ia del Fiore. 

derful artist, and this ranks as his masterpiece. Such radiance 
in the face of Perseus, such calm beauty in that of the Medusa, 
whose head, freshly dissevered, he holds extended in his left 
hand. The pedestal on which the statue stands, whereon this 
great sculptor has told the story of Andromeda in lifelike and 
touching pictures, is exquisite and fully worthy of the statue 
itself. 

Many times by different routes, coming on objects of delight- 
ful interest whichever way one takes — for in this fascinat- 
ing city one is among marvels of art so soon as one sets foot 
out of doors — we betake ourselves to the square of the Cathe- 
dral, where the glories of Florentine art culminate in the Bap- 
tistery with its bronze gates, the Campanile and fairy dome of 
the Cathedral conspicuous objects from whatever point the 
city is viewed and full of grandeur and grace seen from afar 
or near at hand. The Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, was 
begun in 1298 by Arnolfo del Cambio, who was instructed to 
build '■ the loftiest, most sumptuous edifice that human inven- 
tion could devise or human labor execute." In 1331 the work 
begun by Arnolfo was entrusted to Giotto, who erected the 
tower and continued to work on the original design. Soon 
after his death a beautiful fagade was built by the most famous 
sculptors of the time, but this was destroyed in 1575, and has 
been recently replaced after the church had stood without a 
fagade for three hundred years, when in i860 Victor Emman- 
uel laid the foundation of the new one, selecting from the com- 
petitive designs that by De Fabris. This new front seems to 
me well worthy of the church and to harmonize in richness of 
its colored marbles and exquisite workmanship with the other 
portions and with the Campanile close by. 

I was informed by a gentleman who resides here a good part 
of the time, as illustrating the keen interest felt by the entire 
Florentine population in matters of art, that when a question 
arose among the authorities as to the better of two methods of 
finishing the upper surface of the new front, books were opened 
for signatures of the partisans of either method, and that 
boys ranged themselves and fought in the square in behalf of 
one and the other. In 1418 occurred the public competition of 
models for the dome ; gained by Brunelleschi, who was fourteen 
years in building it, the lantern after his design being added 
in 1462. This airy structure rises to the height of 300 feet, 



The Bell Toiuer. — The Baptistery. 299 

with the lantern 352 feet, and is of such grace that it is report- 
ed that when Michael Angelo, a century later, was summoned 
to Rome to surpass this work of Brunelleschi in building St. 
Peter's, he replied, " I will make its sister larger, but not more 
beautiful." The Cathedral, of the style known as Italian 
Gothic, is 556 feet long, 342 feet wide across the transepts, is 
encrusted with precious marbles, and altogether, inside and 
out, rich to a degree, but not so imposing to my mind as the 
great Gothic cathedrals I have seen elsewhere, nor so impres- 
sive as the vast interior of the Mosque of St. Sophia in Con- 
stantinople. The Campanile or Bell-Tower close beside the 
facade of the Cathedral is a square structure rising in four 
stories to the height of 292 feet, and is regarded as one of the 
finest existing works of the kind. Certainly a more pleasing 
object cannot be imagined rising grandly in colored marbles, 
with graceful windows enriched with exquisite tracery, and 
set with row upon row of statues by famous masters. It was 
designed and begun by Giotto in 1334 in the style of the 
Cathedral, and after his death completed by Taddeo Gaddi in 
1387. In its adornment assisted such renowned workers as 
Donatello, Bartolo, Rosso, Niccolo d'Arezzo, Andrea Pisano, 
and that most charming master Luca della Robbia, whose 
colored terra- cotta reliefs are to be seen here in many places, 
and always with pleasure. It was the original intention, I 
believe, to place some terminal structure at top of this square 
tower ; but in all the centuries no one has had the audacity to 
venture to think himself capable, or the well-instructed city 
has refused to sanction any attempt. 

The Baptistery stands in the square in front of the Cathe- 
dral, and its modest proportions are at first, or rather to me at 
first, were disappointing, and only after several visits did I 
realize the charm of its octagonal exterior, the low tones of its 
harmonious parts, its well-proportioned stories, marble orna- 
mentation and fine cornices. It was once the Cathedral, its 
date is uncertain, it was encrusted with marble by Arnolfo, 
but thought to have been once a temple to Mars. The inte- 
rior is so dark at any time of day that it is with difficulty one 
can see the not numerous works of interest under its dome 
90 feet high, the circular space below being set round with pillars 
of Oriental marble. In its marble font all children born in 
Florence are baptized, and whenever I visited the interior the 



300 The Bronze Doors of the Baptistery. 

rite was going on, robed priests, with faces dull and often 
sensual, gathered round little mewling atomies not four hours 
old, the lamp-light showing their tiny heads protruding redly 
from the costliest wrappings the family means can furnish, and 
drenched with holy water to such extent as made its sur- 
vival a miracle. But oftener I got no farther than the glori- 
ous bronze doors, whose storied reliefs would stand forth 
clearly in the abundant light but for the dirt accumulated on 
them and never removed for fear of wearing away the sharp 
features of the countless figures wrought on them. There 
are three of these precious doors, or gates as they are styled, 
each with double valves and deep bronze borders. That on 
the south is the oldest, and was completed in 1330 by Andrea 
Pisano, after twenty-two years' labor, and its reliefs comprise 
scenes from the life of John the Baptist. The door on the 
north side is by Lorenzo Ghiberti, done between the years 
1403 and 1424, and the reliefs show forth, in twenty-eight sec- 
tions, the history of Christ, the Apostles and Fathers down to 
St. Augustine. The third, facing the Cathedral, is by Ghiberti 
also, and executed between the years 1425 and 1452, and rep- 
resents ten scenes from Scripture history of the Old Testament. 
This is the gate Michael Angelo pronounced worthy to form 
the entrance to Paradise. These noble doors were originally 
gilded with gold, now worn away except in some deep por- 
tions, and even in their dusty coverings show such figures of 
dignity and grace, such life and beauty, as one could not be- 
lieve possible. Nor less exquisite are the frames of these doors, 
with their deep, faithful portraiture of flowers and foliage 
sheltering various birds, the whole with the scenes they enclose 
needing only to be awakened from the sleep of ages by the 
touch of some gentle enchantment to glow before us with per- 
fect life. Well may these doors, to which I go over and over 
again, be reckoned among the marvels of art. 

Gathering from the scrappy information which filters 
through various irregular channels from beyond the sea, that 
the 28th of November has been set apart for a day of Thanks- 
giving by the ruler of 65,000,000 of people flourishing and 
free on a continent undreamed of by patient Ghiberti in all 
those years he was working on the gates of the Baptistery ; 
we resolve, in company of some agreeable friends we have 
made here, also from the States, to celebrate our most home- 



llianksgiving-Day. — Search for Pumpkin-Pie. 301 

like festival as nearly in the orthodox Yankee fashion as the 
circumstances of our voluntary banishment will allow. Our 
large private parlor, in the New York Hotel, once rejoicing in 
the title of palace, the last forgotten owner of which for some 
reason failed to marry an American heiress, and so retain 
the vast rooms frescoed with chilly cupids wearing no rai- 
ment in this cold season but scanty wings and little bows and 
arrows, was chosen as the scene of our memorial festivities, 
and our combined faculties proved competent to a menu sat- 
isfactory under any sky ; but at once, on attempting to real- 
ize it, we came on obstacles which threatened to be insur- 
mountable. The intelligent and obliging head-waiter, who, 
from his intimate knowledge of " English as she is spoke," 
was our medium of communication with the Italian chef, was 
painfully obliged to report, after a prolonged conference with 
that awful functionary, that the accomplishment of cranberry- 
sauce and a pumpkin-pie were impossible, for the excellent 
reason that he had no knowledge whatever of those indispen- 
sable elements of a Thanksgiving dinner — indeed, could not 
imagine what these esculents might be. We strove to 
enlighten the mind of our interpreter, and with such success 
that, for his part, he felt quite sure of the pumpkin, having, 
he remembered, seen it growing once on a sort of a tree in 
Sicily. As to the cranberry, he would advise himself, and later 
in the day brought a thin volume, opened to a page whereon 
stood a list of various vegetables, fruits and berries in the 
English tongue, and placing his finger triumphantly on '' cornel- 
berry," declared the problem solved. Not content with this, 
we sent out foraging parties, myself being detailed to address 
me with all diligence to the "English Bakery," no great dis- 
tance away. Going forth under an umbrella, I came upon that 
manufactory of Anglican bread and pastry, and found behind 
the counter of it a plump and merry Italian lady ; and inquiring 
if I were quite correct in supposing this to be the establishment 
known to the citizens of Florence as the " English Bakery," 
was told, in very much broken English, that it was indeed that 
same, but that the English lady who formerly inhabited here 
had returned to Ireland, and when, with drooping expectation, 
I ventured to inquire if pumpkin-pie constituted one of the 
delicacies of her stock, she showed her white teeth and broke 
into great mirth at the uncouth name ; and I left her, hands 



302 Success at Last, ajid a Bounteous Dinner. 

on sides, enjoying a repetition of the sound as she 'tried to 
pronounce, with halting and difficult effort, struggling long 
with the first syllable, " pump-kin pie, pump-kin pie." But 
the inspiration of the chef was not yet exhausted. He sent us 
word that on the morrow he would send in with our luncheon 
his realized conception of the national pie, which duly ap- 
peared, smoking hot, between two crusts, and opening with all 
the outward signs and inward tokens of a mince-pie without 
meat. Endeavoring to fathom on what ground the r/;^/ rested 
his claim that his production should be recognized as pumpkin, 
we found among the ingredients some scanty slices of citron, 
and were no longer hopeful of anything but the turkey, that 
" tame villatic fowl" being well domesticated in all the lands 
we have yet found. But on the eve of the eventful day 
Frattini, revealing a new depth in his resourceful nature, paid 
us a visit, and in a calm and confident manner which carried 
conviction assured us that all would be well on the morrow ; 
that he had now taken the matter seriously in hand himself ; 
that at the proper time not only would the turkey have its 
garnish of cranberries, but the pie should present itself of 
due form and elements. And of a truth when we were set 
down to a table handsomely spread, flowers blooming about 
our cheerful parlor, converted for the occasion into a bit of 
Uncle Sam's domain by the protective folds of two American 
flags, Frattini hovering about in the capacity of major-domo 
wrapped in an air of mystery, there appeared among the well- 
cooked dishes of an abounding dinner excellent cranberry- 
sauce and a better pumpkin-pie than many a New England 
home could boast. We sat long at table, with many thoughts 
of home, and over the wine and walnuts, when the mind is 
most disposed to make allowance, I ventured to read these 
lines, made for " this occasion only," to the eight uncritical 
partakers of the feast : 

THANKSGIVING-DAY IN FLORENCE, 1889. 

We changed our sky but not our hearts, 

Crossing the wide Atlantic Sea, 
From the far land we proudly claim, 

To this sweet town of Tuscany ; 

Through which the classic Arno glides 

Past Brunelleschi's airy dome, 
Grand palaces and hoary towers 

And snowy walls of many a home. 



^^For this Occasion Only.'' 303 

Soft-gliding, as it fain would pause, 

And feel its watery pulses glow 
In light divine from David's face 

Kindled by Michael Angelo. 

Fair are the scenes of this fair spot : 

Gray olive-trees festooned with vines. 
Gleams of time-mellowed convent-walls, 

And sad slopes of the Apennines. 

We love this peopled world of art. 

Trophies august of antique times ; 
Ghiberti's gates, whose conscious saints 

Listen the Campanile's chimes. 

Marbles that breathe and burn to tell 

Of the dead hands which gave them birth, 

Paintings that stir and raise the soul 
Till heaven is nearer us than earth. 

So rest we here in full content ; 

And yet upon this festal day 
Our hearts return o'er land and wave 

To homes of kindred far away, 

Where shine the hospitable fires 

On forms beloved, gathered near 
The feastful tables crowned with thanks 

For blessings of the ripened year. 

And though our softening eyes must miss 

Dear faces that once smiled and shone 
Above the feast in other years, 

And we are left still more alone ; 

Let us be thankful, nor forget 

What loving mercies crown our way, 
And bow our heads with grateful hearts 

Upon this glad Thanksgiving-day. 

We drove, on a bright morning, across the Arno and through 
groves of olives with vines running from tree to tree and well- 
tilled fields studded with noble trees, past villas and old gray 
walls of palaces to the famed monastery of Certosa di Val 
d'Ema, two and one-half miles from the city. The huge walls 
rise from a commanding height like those of a fortress and 
overlook a beautiful expanse of varied hill, valley and plain, 
once the possessions of the monks here and tilled by them 
for five hundred years. Within the walls are a rich church 
and handsome chapels with fine pictures and tombs ; a veri- 



304 Monastery of Certosa di Val d'Ema. — Powers the Sculptor. 

tably impressive place, with its ample cloisters and dim, silent 
corridors. The numerous fraternity of Benedictines who 
lived here, each one in a small cell, the door furnished with 
an opening for handing in the meals, have all been turned 
out by the government, which has appropriated this and all 
similar property in the most high-handed manner, leaving 
some score of them to be " care-takers," as the pleasant monk 
who showed us about said with a natural touch of bitterness, 
"of our own property." The good fathers make a chartreuse 
and perfumes, which one can buy in their quaint old pharmacy, 
from whose clean and well-ordered shelves the poor are sup- 
plied with remedies free of charge. A spot well worth visit- 
ing. Returning we meet, as always in our drives, little two- 
wheeled carts laden with vegetables and wicker bottles of wine, 
the smaller kinds of pretty shape with long, slender necks, 
said to be a graceful form peculiar to Tuscany, the same as 
are served at the table-d' hote of our hotel, holding a red wine 
called " Chienti," a sort I prefer, and resembling a fair claret. 
These little carts are drawn by mules or donkeys, the long 
shafts fastened high above their sides to cumbersome harness 
ornamented with heavy brasses and parti-colored tassels, 
until the little creatures are almost hidden and pverladen 
with their needless equipments. The larger carts employ two 
and sometimes three animals, and I have seen a horse, a mule 
and a donkey working together abreast. 

There are several American painters and sculptors with 
studios here, among them Mr. Longworth Powers, son of 
Hiram Powers, quite a number of whose best statues and all 
his models are on exhibition in the atelier of the son. To my 
untaught eye the " Eve Tempted" of the elder Powers is a 
marble figure as pure and beautiful in its naked innocence as 
the " Venus de' Medici," but this I must not say, I suppose. 
Mr. Powers was engaged, on the occasion of one of my visits, 
in modelling a striking portrait bust — a form of art in 
which he excels — from the same clay his father used in 
modelling the " Greek Slave" forty years ago. He uses it 
over and over, and says it still improves with using. At a 
reception at Mrs. Powers' villa we met the widow of Hiram 
Powers, a well-preserved and agreeable old lady. I was shown 
there a literary bit which so interested me that I begged a 
copy and give it place here. Who ever knew of Charles Fran- 



A Tale of a Nose. 305 

cis Adams " dropping into poetry," or, if that were possible, 
that the "Iceberg," as his grateful countrymen called him 
when, after his noble work for the nation during the civil war, 
he stood for their suffrage, ever melted into such a bit of fun 
as this ? We don't know our fellow-men very well, and often 
better knowledge would give kindlier judgment, I fancy. 

A TALE OF A NOSE. 

BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 

'Tvvas a hard rase that which happened in Lynn ! 
Haven't heard of it, eh ? Well, then, to begin. 
There's a Jew down there whom they call " Old Mose," 
Who travels about and buys old clothes. 

Now Mose — which the same is short for Moses — 

Had one of the biggest kind of noses ; 

It had a sort of an instep in it, 

And he fed it with snufT about once a minute. 

One day he got in a bit of a row 

With a German chap who had kissed his frau, 

And, trying to punch him, k la Mace, 

Had his nose cut off close up to his face. 

He picked it up from off the ground 
And quickly back in its place 'twas bound. 
Keeping the bandage upon his face 
Until it had fairly healed in place. 

Alas for Mose ! 'Twas a sad mistake 
Which he in his haste that day did make ; 
For, to add still more to his bitter cup. 
He found he had placed it wrong side up. 

" There's no great loss without some gain," 
And Moses says in a jocular vein. 
He arranged it so for taking snuff, 
As he never before could get enough. 

One thing, by the way, he forgets to add, 
Which makes the arrangement rather bad : 
Although he can take his snuff with ease, 
He has to stand on his head to sneeze. 

The sculptor Mead has in progress a colossal work sym- 
bolizing the Mississippi River, intended for a public park in 
Chicago, and next door to him Mr. Turner is doing a colossal 
female figure, nine feet high, for the front of the building of an 
insurance company in St. Paul. This is to be in bronze, and 
20 



306 Church of Santa Croce. 

Mr. Turner tried to explain to me that it would be cast in 
Florence by a method revived from that of Benvenuto Cellini, 
who filled the mould with wax, which, keeping the form in 
place, melted and was displaced by the molten bronze. 

I see no way of dealing with the great number of interest- 
ing churches here. Were I capable, a whole volume would be 
needed to describe them. They are full of treasures, and so 
is all Florence for that matter. But I must call to mind and 
help my future recollection with meagre mention of a few of 
those we saw wuth so much pleasure. After the Cathedral and 
Baptistery, the Church of Santa Croce, on the spacious Piazza 
of that name, naturally attracts attention as the Pantheon of 
modern Italy, where are many fine monuments to celebrated 
men, and interesting frescoes brought to light under a coating 
of whitewash said to have been spread over them by the envi- 
ous dislike of Visari in 1566. These were by Giotto and his 
successors, Taddeo Gaddi, Maso di Banco, Giovanni da Milano, 
Agnolo Gaddi and other masters of note, with bas-reliefs 
by the Robbias, whose work in terra-cotta one always sees 
with increasing pleasure. Especially beautiful are the paint- 
ings of Giotto discovered not many years ago in the chapels of 
Peruzzi and the Bardi. The church is cruciform, and begun 
in 1294 from a design by Arnolfo di Bambio, with a modern 
fagade from the old design by Cronaca. The interior is im- 
pressive from its size, and the nave has no side chapels. There 
is a charming rose-window over the west door by Ghiberti, 
Ranged round the interior walls of the nave are the monu- 
ments, among them one to Daniel Manin, the Venetian pa- 
triot, and the tomb of Michael Angelo, who died in Rome in 
1563, but is buried here. This tomb was erected after Vasa- 
ri's design, with a bust above it by Battista Lorenzi. Here, 
also, is the monument to Dante, who is buried at Ravenna, 
where he died on September 14th, 1321, at the age of fifty-six. 
This fine monument, by Stefano Ricci, was erected in 1829, 
and bears the proud inscription, " Onorate raltissit?io poeta r 
which those who only read him in translations and do read 
Shakespere in the original may very well question. There is 
an exquisite monument to the poet Alfieri, who died 1810, by 
Canova, ordered by the Countess of Albany ; the tombs of 
Macchiavelli, died 1527 ; Prince Neri Corsini ; the Countess of 
Albany, widow of the young Pretender, died in 1824 ; Galileo, 



Church of Or San Michele. 307 

died 1642 ; the engraver, Raphael Morghen, died 1833; the com- 
poser, L. Cherubini, died 1842 ; a chapel belonging to the Bo- 
naparte family, with monuments, by Bartolini, to Carlotta and 
Julia Clary Bonaparte, who died respectively in 1839 and 1845.. 

One of the most beautiful tombs I have seen — and there are 
many of these — is that of Carlo Marsuppini, Chancellor of 
Florence, Secretary to Pope Eugenius IV., who died in 1455, 
by Desiderio da Settignano, and there are many others which 
I must pass without even a mention. One realizes, in looking 
at the names on these grand and costly monuments, what an 
illustrious roll of men Florence possessed, and how their 
power and genius exerted here through many centuries have 
made her the famous city she has been and must continue to 
be so long as the arts and sciences are honored among men. 
At the end of the corridor leading to the sacristy is the Medici 
chapel, where is a sweet and tender picture of the " Corona- 
tion of the Virgin," by Giotto. The sacristy is a charming 
room, of admirable proportions, with old inlaid cabinets around 
the walls for keeping the priestly robes, an exquisite font, 
interesting frescoes by Niccolo, and, most beautiful of all, five 
great missals with miniatures, some of them from the hand of 
Fra Angelico. There are noble cloisters by Arnolfo and Bru- 
nelleschi, and in the old refectory opening from them a fresco 
of a " Last Supper," fast fading from damp, but beautiful to a 
degree, by Giotto. In this portion of the old convent, now- 
suppressed, are the rooms in which the Inquisition held its 
tribunals from 1284 to 1782. Church and cloisters and tombs 
and monasteries and frescoes and all else here, are of exceed- 
ing interest. 

I allude to the Church of Or San Michele to indicate how 
the love of art in the middle ages had penetrated all ranks of 
the citizens here. When this church was completed in 1412, 
the twelve guilds of the city undertook to decorate the outside 
walls with statues, and here they stand in handsome niches. 
The judges and notaries placed one of St. Luke, by John of 
Bologna ; the merchants, one of Christ and St. Thomas, by 
Andrea del Verrocchio, in a niche designed for them by Dona- 
tello ; the cloth-dealers, John the Baptist — perhaps to indicate 
the need of more clothing than that prophet was used to 
wear — by Ghiberti ; the silk- weavers, one of St. John, by Mon- 
telupo ; the physicians and apothecaries a Madonna — possibly 



308 Church of San Lorenzo. 

with a consciousness that none needed pity and celestial succor 
so much as their patients — by Mino da Fiesole. This has been 
removed to the interior of the church and its place filled by a 
noble figure by Donatello made originally for the armorers. 
The furriers set up a statue of St. James, by Nanni di Banco ; 
the joiners, one of St. Mark, by Donatello — a grand, simple, 
honest face ; the farriers, one of St. Eligius, also by Nanni di 
Banco ; the woollen-weavers, one of St. Stephen, by Ghiberti ; 
the money-changers, one of St. Matthew, by Ghiberti and 
Michelozzo ; the bricklayers, carpenters, smiths and masons 
set up in their niches four saints also by Nanni di Banco ; the 
shoemakers, one of St. Philip by the same, and the butchers, 
one of St. Peter, by Donatello. What a pleasant and instruc- 
tive light gleams from those remote times here, when the very 
humblest craftsrnen united to set up these fair works of art, 
and cast about them for the greatest masters money or influ- 
ence could command to honor their trades and adorn the city 
wherein they practised them ! Think of the butchers of New 
York, to say nothing of the merchants, and Wall Street "money- 
changers," seeking for some best sculptor — where would they 
look ? — to make some noble work for their own satisfaction and 
that of their fellow-citizens ! In the interior is an exquisite high 
altar, by Andrea Orcagna, in marble and precious stones, with 
beautiful reliefs, completed, as the inscription states, in 1359, 
and set up over the miracle-working image of the Virgin. In 
the Piazza before the church stands an imposing statue of 
Dante, in white marble, 19 feet high, on a pedestal 23 feet, 
erected May 14th, 1865, on the six hundredth anniversary of 
the poet's birth. 

San Lorenzo is one of the oldest churches in Italy, having 
been consecrated by St. Ambrose in 393, burned down in 
1423, and rebuilt in 1425, from designs by Brunelleschi. Be- 
fore the high altar is a slab in the pavement marking the 
simple grave of Cosimo de' Medici, with the inscription 
" Fater Patricz." He died August, 1464, the founder of the 
illustrious house of Medici, several of whom sleep here. Dona- 
tello is buried in the same vault. This noble artist has much 
good work here, a marble monument to the parents of Cosimo, 
a bust of St. Lawrence, bronze doors and a reading-desk or 
ambo being among them. Cosimo founded the Laurentian 
Library adjacent to the church, subsequently enlarged by the 



The Laurentian Library. — Chapel of the Prmces. 309 

succeeding Medici, where are a great many rare and valuable 
manuscripts, of which I examined with pleasure one of Virgil 
of the fifth century, one of Tacitus of the tenth, brought 
from Germany, and said to be the only copy containing the 
first five books of the "Annals," a copy of Petrarch's Sonnets, 
with exquisite miniature portraits of himself and Laura, Boc- 
caccio's " Decameron," etc. The library building, with the 
portico and staircase, were designed by Michael Angelo, and 
to me are crude and sombre. He also built the new Sacristy 
as a tomb for the Medici, containing the mausoleum of Giu- 
liano de' Medici, surmounted with a statue of him as the 
General of the Church. The sarcophagus below is adorned 
by the statues of "Day" and "Night," and opposite is the 
statue of Lorenzo de' Medici above his tomb, on which re- 
cline the statues of "Evening" and "Dawn." This is the 
famous tomb of the Medici, and these are the statues, all by 
Michael Angelo, of which I had read and heard so much, and 
on which writers of fame have gushed in bathos as they have 
done over the "Venus de' Medici." The effigies of the Medici 
are indeed strikingly life-like figures, but the other marbles 
convey little meaning to me, and I might stand before the 
bepraised figures of " Evening" and " Dawn," " Night " and 
" Day" till Doomsday and see no more than huge sprawling 
forms in stone, with the meaning intended so obscure as to be 
confusingly undiscoverable to me. The room itself with its 
dome is suitably majestic, as it could not well fail to be, hav- 
ing been copied, as to its form, from the old one designed by 
Brunelleschi. The Chapel of the Princes, connected with the 
tomb by a passage, was built as a burial-chapel of the Grand- 
Dukes of the Medici family, and, begun in 1604, is not yet 
completed. This octagonal room, rising into a lofty dome, 
and I should think 50 feet in diameter, has walls encrusted 
with precious marbles and mosaics, whose richness may be 
inferred from the fact that the Medici expended from their own 
private fortunes about four and one-half million dollars in 
our money in its construction and ornament. Think, too, 
how much greater than now the purchasing power of money 
was during the two hundred and fifty years the work has been 
going on ! 

In the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella stand two obelisks of 
marble resting on brazen tortoises. These served as the goals 



310 Churches of Santa Maria Novella, San Spirito, and Carmine. 

of chariot-races instituted in the reign of Cosimo I. in 1563. The 
Church of Santa Maria Novella is in a style uniting the Gothic 
with the Tuscan, with pleasing effect. It is mentioned in the 
'' Decameron." The fayade of red and white marble and the 
portal strike me very agreeably, and the spacious interior is 
helped by the pointed Gothic arches to be more impressive 
than I find the Romanesque churches are as a rule. The most 
notable of the frescoes with which this church abounds are 
those which cover great spaces in the choir by Domenico 
Ghirlandajo, done in 1490, and called the finest specimens of 
Florentine art before Leonardo, Michael Angelo and Raphael. 
They contain a great many portraits, but I care little for them, 
nor for the much-bepraised " Madonna" by Cimabue. There 
is exquisite stained glass in some windows as old as these 
frescoes after designs by Filippino Lippi, and in the sacristy 
such a delightful fountain by Giovanni della Robbia, and the 
ancient cloisters are rich in frescoes, some of them by Or- 
cagna. A little way off one enters through a handsome 
gateway the laboratory of the old monastery, where a liqueur 
special to Florence, "Alkermes," and perfumes are distilled, 
and a suite of the charming old arched rooms are kept up 
in a simple and befitting style, ornamented with old faience 
of great value. 

The Church of San Spirito, on the left bank of the Arno, 
has a noble interior, and is attractive with its thirty-eight 
altars designed by Filippo Brunelleschi in 1433. This church 
was built for the Augustinians, and Martin Luther, who was 
a monk of that order, preached in it on his way to Rome. 
Very stately is the sacristy, to which a beautiful covered pas- 
sage leads. On the left bank, too, are the church and con- 
vent of Carmine, where, in the Cappella Brancacci, are the 
famous frescoes of Masaccio done in 1423, mingled with 
others by Masolino and Filippino Lippi. The adjoining 
cloisters of the Carmelite Monastery are very attractive, and 
in the old refectory is a fresco of a " Last Supper," by Allori, 
in which the face of Christ is of exceeding sweetness. 

These churches, as well as the galleries, museums and all 
public buildings, are very cold, the massive stone walls and 
floors emitting a peculiarly penetrating chilliness hard to bear. 
The only apparatus for heating, where anything at all is used, 
as in the galleries, is an upright cylinder of brass forming a 



Legend of San Miniato. — Monastery of San Marco. 311 

brazier, in which smoulder a quantity of live coals and hot 
ashes, giving out just enough heat to make one more sensible 
of the cold. Priests and monks go shivering about with red 
hands and sandalled feet blotchy with chilblains, and poor 
women come in to pray hugging a little earthen dish of coals 
called scaldino, as if it were a precious baby. As elsewhere, 
these churches are dedicated to saints whose lives and deeds 
and miracles they respectively commemorate, and although 
among the enlightened Florentines the body of relics and pious 
legends does not seem to have grown to such bulk as one 
finds in many other great cities, still it is respectable in quan- 
tity and quality. Take as a specimen the Florentine legend 
of St. Minias or Miniato, in whose honor the beautiful church 
of San Miniato was built, as related by Mrs. Jameson. The 
same grotesque puerility is found in most of the legends of 
the church. " San Miniato was an Armenian prince serving 
in the Roman army under Decius. Being denounced as a 
Christian, he was brought before the emperor, who was then 
encamped upon a hill outside the gates of Florence, and who 
ordered him to be thrown to the beasts in the amphitheatre. 
A panther was let loose upon him, but when he called upon 
our Lord he was delivered ; he then suffered the usual tor- 
ments, being cast into a boiling caldron and afterward sus- 
pended to a gallows, stoned, and shot with javelins, but in his 
agony an angel descended to comfort him and clothed him in 
a garment of light ; finally he was beheaded." He held out 
well, and to him stands the church bearing his name, with 
a fa(;ade exquisitely wrought in colored marbles, subdued and 
softened by time. 

From church to monastery is an easy step. That of San 
Marco, on the Piazza of that name, is not only interesting as a 
complete and well-preserved monastic pile, but famous from 
its associations with the Dominican monk Savonarola, its prior. 
Fra Angelico came here from his convent at Fiesole and pro- 
fusely adorned the walls of the cloister and cells with the most 
beautiful of his works. Here he lived and wrought through 
many gentle and peaceful years, never taking up his brush 
without a prayer nor altering anything once expressed of his 
tender fancies on canvas, because it was the will of God they 
should appear as first painted. He died here in 1455. at the ripe 
age of sixty-eight. The long range of monastic cells opening 



313 '■'■Brothers of Mercy.'' 

into a corridor ceiled with wood dates from 1436, as do almost 
all parts of the present pile. The cells are as large as the hall 
bedrooms of our Brooklyn twenty-five-feet houses, well lighted 
by pleasant windows, floored with dull red brick, and now 
untenanted, as the monastery has been suppressed by the gov- 
ernment, save by Fra Angelico's glorious saints and angels 
shining in gold from the walls. At the upper end of the cor- 
ridor are the two small cells of the prior Savonarola, burned 
at the stake on the Piazza della Signoria in 1498. Here are 
shown among other relics of him his crucifix, hair-shirt, an 
old picture representing his execution, and a bust showing the 
coarse, strong features of an ecstatic bigot, as I fancy him to 
have been. Fra Bartolommeo was also a brother here, and 
has left fine frescoes ; so was the beneficent San Antonio, 
founder and promoter of many charities here. A cell adjoin- 
ing the church has a plain inner room reached by steps built, 
as an inscription shows, by Cosimo de' Medici, that he might 
have a quiet place for converse with Fra Angelico and other 
brothers. In the pleasant old library are shown as many as 
eighty great choral-books of parchment-leaves exquisitely 
illuminated, some done by Fra Benedetto, a brother of Fra 
Angelico, and the rest by celebrated artists of the fifteenth 
century, gems of patient, loving labor, the miniatures set in 
broad margins of gold. This library is the old Scriptorium 
too, and one fancies the gentle monks, in the soft light of the 
high narrow windows, bending devoutly over this pious work. 
In the monastery are the rooms of the Della Cruscan Academy, 
founded in the latter part of the sixteenth century to preserve 
the purity of the Italian language. The Academy is putting 
through the press a large dictionary of the language. 

We often meet bands of the " Brothers of Mercy" from the 
Hospital of the Misericordia, founded here in 1240, and since 
maintained to afford succor to sick or wounded people. At a 
summons from the Campanile — their hospital is on the Cathe- 
dral square and connected with the Bigallo, a lovely little 
Gothic loggia, by Orcagna, for the exhibition of foundlings to 
the charitable public — those on duty for the day come forth in 
long black robes with hoods so enveloping face and form as 
to leave only the eyes visible, making recognition impossible. 
Four of the party bear a litter on their shoulders covered with 
a black pall, and they hasten to any scene of accident or sick- 
ness to which they may be summoned, their services being 



National Museum. 313 

quite gratuitous. All ranks of society are represented in the 
brotherhood, and when Dickens was here forty years ago he 
writes that the Grand-Duke was a member and did duty with 
the rest. 

The old palace of the Bargello, built in 1255 from designs 
of Arnolfo di Lapo, and for several centuries the residence of 
the Podesta or chief magistrate, then and to 1859 serving as 
prison and seat of the head of police, is now occupied by the 
National Museum. There is a fine but not numerous collec- 
tion of weapons here, once owned by the Medici, and a 
beautiful great bronze cannon cast in 1638 by Cosimo Cenni. 
The great court, with its grand staircase by Agnolo Gaddi 
and charming upper loggia by Orcagna, most quaint and 
rich in color everywhere, make a most impressive picture of 
the circumstances of lordly life in the middle ages. There is 
a series of reliefs carven upon white marble slabs by Luca 
della Robbia representing the execution of various forms of 
music, vocal and instrumental, intended for the organ gallery 
of the Cathedral, so simply quaint in their naturalness that I 
declare I fell in love with them at sight and think them almost 
the charmingest objects I have seen. These reliefs are so fit- 
tingly described by a writer in the Church Quarterly Review, 
quoted by Hare, that I repeat it here : 

" These happy children standing or sitting in careless ease 
with their varied instruments in their hands, these fair-faced 
boys and maidens blowing long trumpets, sounding their harp 
and lyre, and clashing their symbols as they go, singing all 
the while for gladness of heart, breathe the very spirit of 
music. Not a detail is left out, not a touch forgotten. We 
see the motion of their hands beating time as they bend over 
each other's shoulders to read the notes, the rhythmic measure 
of their feet as they circle hand in hand to the tune of their 
own music, the very swelling of their throats, as, with heads 
thrown back and parted lips, they pour forth their whole soul 
in song. Never was the innocent beauty, the unconscious 
grace of childhood more perfectly rendered than in these 
lovely bands of curly-headed children thrilled through and 
through with the power and the joy of their melody." 

There are others intended for the same purpose by Dona- 
tello, but one cannot see even the work of so great a master 
in the presence of those others by della Robbia. But this 
comparison, unfavorable in this instance to Donatello, will not 



314 Academy of Fine Arts. — The Protestant Cemetery. 

prevent one's pleasure at sight of his bronze statue of David 
with the head of Goliath at his feet, a figure and face and 
attitude realizing the idea of the young shepherd victorious, 
more naturally and fully, by far than Michael Angelo's " David," 
whose face is noble and full of the triumphant ardor of a hero 
of classical antiquity. There is a rich collection of Majolica 
and Urbino ware and some good tapestries, and many other 
fair and pleasing objects in many kinds, and notable among 
them to me the walls of a room where are hung many glazed 
terra-cotta reliefs by Luca and Andrea della Robbia. 

More of these beautiful works greet our entrance into the 
Academy of Fine Arts, where are many pictures of interest and 
a "Tribune," where in 1882 the "David" of Michael Angelo 
was brought from its old position, chosen by him at the gate 
of the Palazzo Vecchio, and placed along with casts from a 
number of his other most famous works. The "David" is a 
noble figure truly, vital with power, but it is the form of a 
giant and not a shepherd-boy. Among the pictures I most 
liked some by Fra Bartolommeo, Fillipino Lippi, Ghirlandajo 
and Perugino, Raphael's master, his " Mount of Olives" and 
" Assumption" being more admirable than any work of his 
we have met elsewhere. 

The Protestant Cemetery is a pleasant spot, grassy and well 
shaded with old trees, and now no longer permitted to be used 
as a burial-place. Once it stood in the fields outside the 
town, which has overtaken and enveloped it in dusty streets. 
Here I went one pleasant Sunday afternoon and looked on the 
graves of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Arthur Clough, Walter 
Savage Landor and Theodore Parker. I was surprised to 
see the flat stone above the grave of the last named quite cov- 
ered with bunches of flowers, separate offerings in various 
stages of decay, showing that his grave is frequently visited 
by affectionate admirers, of whom I have always been one. 
As I stood by his grave in this foreign clime, I recalled some 
lines I wrote on hearing of his death in i860, and I insert 
them here as my poor offering on his grave : 

ON THE DEATH OF THEODORE PARKER. 

Striving at longest life for noblest ends, 
He fled from Death to meet him under skies 
Stellar and grand with old-world memories, 
To which his name an added lustre gives. 



Lines on the Death of Theodore Parker. 315 

The True, the Beautiful, the Good were met 

And full inspher6d in his ample soul ; 

His scornful eye withered Tradition's scroll 

Where cunning lies and hoary shams are set. 

Grasping the sword of Truth in mailed hand. 

He lopped the Time's abuses as they rose. 

And smote steadfastly with his dreadful blows 

Full on the Giant curse of this fair land. 

Yet was he meek and gentle, loved all, but the best 

Earth's suffering ones, despised of the rest. 

Amerigo Vespucci, whose name, to the neglect of Columbus, 
was undeservedly bestowed on the Western continent, was a 
Florentine, and a large handsome palace bears a tablet to the 
effect that he was the owner and occupant. 

I took a box at the opera, filling it with friends, to witness a 
performance of " Roberto el Diabolo." The popular tenor, 
Spagno, has a good voice and fine presence, and the well- 
filled house lavished on his singing abundant and, it seemed 
to me, discriminating applause. The boxes rise impressively 
above each other in six tiers, and were filled with handsome 
ladies and fine-looking men. The ladies were well, even 
elegantly dressed, but in quiet taste, and I did not see one 
instance of that style of " full-dress" — more correctly named 
undress — which was universal in the boxes of Her Majesty's 
Opera House in London. The incidental ballet was well 
danced by graceful and pretty girls, but, as with us, seems to 
be less and less regarded. 

Florence is, of course, largely supplied with churches, and 
the churches are well supplied with bells, and as these are 
well-attended upon, the city is musical with them, striking the 
hours in clocks, or rung in peals, or tolled on occasions fre- 
quent throughout the twenty-four hours. They are bells of 
refined characters, too, and exchange soft Tuscan responses 
with their near and remote neighbors from Arno side to the 
far-away declivities on which gray chapels or low-walled con- 
vents cling. The bells of the Campanile especially, utter rich, 
dripping tones, as if half smothered in honey, and are 
singularly sweet, whether heard as one lies dreamily awake 
in the advancing dawn or in the crowded street at midday. 
But whether at dawn or midday or eventide, their tones will 
cease to vibrate in my ears, for we must leave this charming 
city, full storehouse of delightful art, growing each day more 
delightful to us. Adieu, fair Florence ! 



316 Leave Florence for Rome. 

December 14. — We left Florence for Rome by rail at 7 a.m., 
just as the dawn had fully overspread the sky with a roseate 
light changing to purple, the mist lying like a veil carelessly 
flung along the valley of the Arno, but violet on the long, 
broken spurs of the Apennines, their crests powdered with 
snow. The valley narrows rapidly and grows more pictu- 
resque, and thirteen miles down is intersected by the Sieve, of 
whose beautiful valley we have a glimpse. Twenty-five miles 
from Florence, near Figline, is a region made widely known by 
the fossil remains found there of the elephant, rhinoceros, 
mastodon, hippopotamus, hyena, tiger, bear, etc. At the dis- 
tance of fifty-four miles lies the pleasant town of Arezzo, the 
ancient Arretium, one of the twelve confederate cities of 
Etruria, and more distinguished as the birthplace of many 
noted men, among them Maecenas, patron of Horace and Vir- 
gil and friend of Augustus Caesar, who died at Rome a.d. 9 ; 
the Benedictine monk, Guido Monaco, who invented the pres- 
ent system of musical notation, dying in 1050 ; Petrarch, the 
poet, born here of Florentine parents in 1304 ; and many others 
less noted, among them Vasari, the painter, architect and 
biographer of artists. 

We leave the valley of the Arno for that of the Chiana. 
High up above its fertile plains rises the walled city of Cor- 
tona, one of the oldest cities in Italy and the principal strong- 
hold of the Etruscans. It clings to the side of the steep rim 
of the valley like a heap of enormous rocks worn by time and 
storm into fantastic resemblances to human habitations, gray 
and sombre as the rocky hills themselves. How a population 
of say 10,000 manage to live up there can only be known to 
themselves. Near by is Lago Trasimeno, the ancient Lacus 
Trasimenus, where 217 B.C. Carthaginian Hannibal defeated 
with great slaughter the Romans under the Consul Flaminius, 
who perished there. It is a handsome sheet of blue water, 
some thirty miles in diameter, rimmed round with a deep 
setting of oak and olive woods. At ninety-three miles is 
Chiusi, the ancient Clusium, one of the twelve Etruscan 
capitals, and the seat of Lars Porsena, 

" Lars Porsena of Clusium, 
By the nine gods he swore 
That the great house of Tarquin 
Should suffer wrong no more," 



Mount Soracte. 317 

as Macaulay hath said in his ballad of Horatius. At one hun- 
dred and eighteen miles lies Orvieto on an isolated tufa rock 
— for we are now in a volcanic district, the centre of which is 
the Lake of Bolsena, or Lacus Vulsiniensis, occupying the huge 
crater of an extinct volcano — at an elevation of 700 feet, with pre- 
cipitous natural walls, making it a place of such strength that 
in the middle ages it afforded a refuge to the popes. Our way 
is now along the valley of the Tiber, here a stream where we 
first meet it some 50 feet wide, but with a broad, sandy margin, 
indicating that it is liable to wide overflows. It winds its way 
with many folds and convolutions along a widening valley of 
much fertility, like a huge tawny serpent, augmented in vol- 
ume all along by frequent tributaries, yellow as itself and 
charged with earthy material brought from the mountains 
where they take their rise. 

We should have made a stop at Orvieto to see the fine Cathe- 
dral there, said to be one of the most interesting structures in 
Italy, a noble example of the Italian-Gothic, and unusually 
rich in precious marbles, sculptures and mosaics ; but the 
peculiar chill of the weather, to which we feel unaccountably 
susceptible, makes me desirous of the comfort to be had only 
in the large cities, and we reluctantly pass it by. There is 
something inexplicable in the effects of this winter climate upon 
all the members of my party. Although roses are in bloom 
out of doors, we are chilled to the bone, in spite of wraps and 
extra precautions, and have symptoms of influenzas and aches 
— observable, too, everywhere among the Americans we meet. 

A little below Orvieto lie two as picturesque villages as one 
may expect to see, Baschi and Bomargo. We soon have in 
full view the strikingly picturesque Mount Soracte, sung by 
Horace in the ninth ode of the First Book, " Vides ut alta stet 
nive candidiun Soracte,''' one of his most charming poems, and I 
could have wished to see Soracte '''' candid um nive.'' It rises 
precipitously about 2500 feet, its summit cleft into three 
peaks, on the highest of which stands the Church of San 
Silvestro, with a monastery of the same name lower down. 
In Horace's time a famous temple to Apollo stood on the 
site of this church, and the peaks of the mountain rising 
abruptly from the plain would lie on the very northern 
horizon of the poet's view from the Sabine hills. A translation 
I made of this ode runs in my mind all the way along in sight 



318 '' Ad Thaliarchtim." 

of this classic mountain, and I give myself quiet by inserting 
it here : 

Horace, Ode IX., Book I. 

AD THALIARCHUM. 

See how the wintry snow is piled 

High on Soracte's brow, 
And whitens wide the forest-tops, 

Low bending every bough ; 
And frozen to their inmost depths 

The streams are silent now. 

Drive out the cold with logs high-piled 

Upon the blazing hearth ; 
And, Thaliarchus, freely draw 

From jar of Sabine earth, 
The mellow wine, whose ripened cheer 

Four autumns since had birth. 

Leave to the gods all things beside ; 

Lo ! at their high command. 
The winds late battling with the waves 

Breathe soft o'er sea and land ; 
The cypress and the aged ash 

In unvexed quiet stand. 

Enjoy each fleeting hour, dear boy, 

Free from foreboding care ; 
Mix with the dance, and, warm of blood. 

In love's fond transports share ; 
For crabbed age comes on apace. 

Age with his silver hair. 

Freely perform in camp and field 
' All deeds of skill and might ; 
But fail not the appointed tryst, 

When, midst the silent night, 
Faint whispers stealing through the dark 

Confess the maid's delight. 

And when at length a merry laugh 

Her hiding-place betrays. 
And to surrender she is fain, 

With many coy delays, 
A ring or bracelet fondly snatched 

The long chase well repays. 

We run along the left bank of the Tiber through the high 



Ro7ne. 319 

region of the Sabina, and twenty-three miles from Rome are 
at the village of Passo di Correse, derived from the ancient 
Curos, the old Sabine town where Numa Pompilius was born, 
and within five miles of the city, on a hill to the right, note 
the site of ancient Fidenae, cross the Anio near its confluence 
with the Tiber, two miles above the city, and making a wide 
circuit in the broad and desolate Campagna, with picturesque 
ruins everywhere, roll into a large, handsome depot, having 
made the distance of one hundred and ninety-six miles from 
Florence in just seven hours. The lofty dome of St. Peter's 
had been in view a half hour before, almost the only visible 
object from the car-windows to remind one of the near pres- 
ence of the Eternal City ; and now, entering one of a long line 
of omnibuses drawn up before the station, we are driven 
through broad modern streets, whose aspect chased away the 
sentiments natural to one whose thoughts of Rome are of her 
as she was nigh two thousand years ago, in that period when 
" the mightiest Julius fell." We have a pleasant suite of rooms 
in the Quirinale Hotel, looking south and west, on the Quirinal 
Hill, a thoroughly modern quarter. This hotel, kept by a 
Swiss landlord, is fully modern, and there are a large number 
of Americans here, among whom we find several friends and 
acquaintances. 

The first sound to greet my ears on coming out of a pro- 
longed sleep at ten o'clock on our first morning in Rome was 
*' There is a Happy Land," rung out from a chime of pleasant 
bells in the belfry of the American Church. In the afternoon, 
with that profound and imaginative antiquarian, Signor Frat- 
tini, at this present, and for some months heretofore, consent- 
ing, for a quite unworthy stipend, to sweep me along with 
him, as it were, through the civilizations of the old world, in 
the character of guide, philosopher and friend, I strolled forth 
to see if, perchance, I might happen on anything dating back 
beyond the time of Victor Emmanuel. At the distance of a 
few steps from the hotel I was rewarded, for in a crossway 
below the wall of the Villa Aldobrandini lies, quite apart from 
any other structure, a few short courses of a wall of huge 
blocks of black stone, a fragment of the ancient walls, dating 
from the time of the kings and put in place centuries before 
Christ. 

A few minutes' walk brings one to the Piazza of the Monte 



320 Piazza of the Monte Cavallo. — The Pincian Hill. 

Cavallo, on which fronts the huge, ugly Palace of the Quirinal, 
the residence of the popes, until Pius IX. made his escape 
from it in 1S48, after which it remained unoccupied until 
Victor Emmanuel took possession in 187 1, since which time it 
has been the Royal Palace. In the centre of the Piazza stands 
a red granite obelisk, with its base 95 feet high, brought from 
Egypt by Claudius, a.d. 57, and placed before the mausoleum 
of Augustus, and removed to its present site in 1781. At its 
base and close by a fountain playing into a handsome basin of 
Egyptian granite brought here from the Forum, where it had 
long been used as a watering-trough, tower the majestic 
statues of Castor and Pollux reining in their horses. They 
once stood in front of the baths of Constantine, and Hare 
states that by an old tradition they are said to have been a 
present from Tiridates to Nero. On their bases are the names 
of those greatest of the Greek sculptors, Phidias and Prax- 
iteles. I do not know the grounds of imputing these works to 
such hands, and from what little I know of the matter, the 
presumption would be that they are from the hand of a pupil 
of the former. They have certainly come down from a remote 
time as the work of these greatest sculptors of the best age of 
Greece, and by whomsoever wrought, they greatly impress 
me, the heroic forms of the twins rising in godlike proportions, 
the clear profiles of their beautiful faces serene in resistless 
power, in glorious relief on the stainless blue of the western 
sky. 

A walk of a few minutes took us to the summit of the Pin- 
cian Hill, the northernmost of the seven hills of Rome, the 
ancient " Collis hortorum," or "hill of gardens," so named 
because the rich and luxurious LucuUus had his famous 
grounds and villa here, where he gave those feasts which have 
made his name the symbol of costly living. Later, the infa- 
mous Messalina, the fifth wife of the Emperor Claudius, com- 
passed the death of Valerius Asiaticus, the owner in her 
time, in order to possess them, and held high revel here until 
her debaucheries so enraged her husband that she was mur- 
dered in the gardens, which had a bad name afterward and 
fell into decay, being during the middle ages no more than 
desolate fields, where the ghost of Nero was believed to walk, 
and later a vineyard belonging to the monastery of Santa 
Maria at the foot of the hill. During the French occupation 



A View of the Surrouiidi/igs of Rome. 321 

under the third Napoleon it was laid out in a public drive and 
pleasure-ground approached by a broad, fine, winding avenue, 
with statues and basins and fountains bordering it. The 
whole summit is not more than ten acres, I should say, but is 
laid out with such art, and its scanty proportions are so 
screened by rows and clumps of handsome trees, cypresses, 
sycamores, live-oaks and a variety of flowering shrubs, and 
the drives and walks are so artfully prolonged and doubled 
on each other, that one feels himself in a spacious park. Here 
all the world of Rome comes in carriages and on foot, and a 
sprinkling of the gilded youth on horseback, every afternoon 
between four and six, to listen to a good band playing spark- 
ling music, to see and be seen. The crowd is picturesquely 
made up of all sorts of people, princes and fine ladies, friars 
of many an order, priests, and strong, brown nurses in the 
only national costumes visible, giving a bright air to the 
moving panorama, as they thread the throng in blue and gold 
and red, carrying, as if they did not feel the weight, their 
young charges swathed in long, trailing white robes. These 
nurses, so full-throated, striking and even noble of feature and 
expression and carriage, come nearer to realizing my previous 
idea of the ancient Roman type of form and face than do any 
other of the people, high or low. They are from the country 
round about. The approaches and walks all about are set 
thickly with ancient statues and fountains and busts of emi- 
nent Italians to the number of several hundred, giving the 
grounds a noble and inhabited look. A terrace on the west 
side 150 feet above the valley of the Tiber affords a magnifi- 
cent view in all directions, including the lofty dome of St. 
Peter's and the Vatican buildings, the long, low line of the 
Janiculan hills on the opposite side of the Tiber, with the huge 
bulk of St. Angelo, the Pantheon, and a world of domes, 
belfries and towers, rising above the close, narrow streets 
on the hither side, and beyond all, stretching away to the blue 
line of the sea, the vast and solemn Campagna. 

Returning, I stopped for half an hour in the chapel of 
S. Trinita de' Monti, to hear the sweet-voiced nuns sing the 
Benediction. They are invisible behind a screen in the gal- 
lery, and one would like to think them as fair and pure as the 
notes which float down into the silence of the hushed nave 
like the tones of silver bells. An organ accompanied them, 
21 



322 The Seven Hills of Rottie. 

and before the altar a handsome priest sang the responses in 
a rich baritone voice. 

For ten days now I have made no further entry, and have 
done little more than endeavor to get some partially clear idea 
of the topography of the Eternal City. The city of Rome 
lies in a vast plain beginning among the recesses of the Apen- 
nines and stretching away southwest nearly to the Mediter- 
ranean, some eighty-five miles long by twenty-five wide. 
This plain, called by the general name of the Campagna, was 
once the bed of the sea, raised into broken undulations by 
volcanic forces, remains of which exist in numerous extinct 
craters all about, in the lava and peperino often met with and 
the red tufa found everywhere. On the east lie the Sabine 
Mountains, a chain of the Apennines, and to the south of 
these, and separated from them by a level interval of four 
-miles, the short, detached range of the Alban Hills, also of 
volcanic origin. Through this vast plain flows the Tiber, some 
two hundred miles in length, having its rise far up among the 
Apennines, and joining the Mediterranean some fourteen miles 
below the city, through which it flows, having been increased 
by the Anio just above the walls. The famous seven hills of 
Rome are a detached range of volcanic hills on the eastern or 
left bank of the river, between which and the bases of the 
range lies a considerable plain, broadened at one point by a 
curve of the river into the classical Campus Martius. These 
seven hills are now not very clearly distinguishable from one 
another, as their elevation above the range is slight, having 
been diminished through the centuries by cutting down and 
filling up. Looked at from the low range of the Janiculan on 
the opposite bank, these hills seem no more than a low, even 
range, some 200 feet high, sloping up from the river and cov- 
ered with buildings. But sufficient differences still exist to 
mark the designations by which the inequalities have long 
been known, although these are not the names in all cases 
used by the Romans in the earliest times, when some sub- 
divisions of the principal heights had special names now no 
longer used and counted to make up the " Septimontium," or 
seven hills. But after the earliest times, stated roughly, the 
designations were made as they now stand ; and leaving the 
archaeologists and antiquaries to contend over minor particu- 
lars, I will name the hills in order from north to south, and 



Their Names, 333 

speak particularly of each later on as I visit them. The seven 
hills of Rome, then, are the Quirinal, Viminal, Capitoline, 
Esquiline, Palatine, Coeline, Aventine, of which the Capitoline, 
Palatine and Quirinal are historically the most important. 
On a portion of these hills and on the plains on both sides the 
Tiber, in the palmy days of the imperial rule, dwelt a popula- 
tion of from one and a half to two million people, where now 
is less than one-fifth of that number. In the fourteenth cen- 
tury it had fallen as low as 20,000. The vast and melancholy 
Campagna, marshy, malarial, deserted, with not a tenth of its 
surface under cultivation, was then densely populated and 
covered with prosperous towns. This sad change began when 
the small farmers who owned and tilled the soil were gradually 
displaced by large landed proprietors and the great plain con- 
verted into vast estates and pastures. As cultivation dimin- 
ished the malaria increased and has reduced the inhabitants 
to a scanty race of herdsmen, who with their cattle go to the 
mountains during the summer months, so plague-stricken is 
all this surroundmg country. It is estimated that only one- 
sixth of the land of the Campagna belongs to the working 
owners, one-third to the nobility and about one-half to ecclesi- 
astical corporations. These large properties are let out to 
wholesale contractors, of whom there are only some fifty 
altogether ; and although the government is taking some 
feeble steps to reform and improve this inadequate cultivation, 
but little progress has been made, so that this capital of Italy, 
well situated of itself, with an excellent water supply, has 
surroundings more unhealthy than an old-time Indiana marsh. 
I shall say nothing of the history of this marvellous city, 
" mother of nations," mistress of the world through so many 
ages, first by the power of arms and after by that of religion, 
so that the heart beats faster at the very mention of the name 
of Rome. Every school boy and girl knows the wonderful 
story from the legends of the mythical time of Romulus and 
Remus and their foster-mother, the tameless but nourishing 
wolf, which 

" Gave them of her own fierce milk, 
Rich with raw flesh and gore," 

perhaps more than a thousand years before our era, all along 
down through the periods of the kings, the Republic and the 



324 The Past of the Eternal City. 

Empire, followed by the long sway of the Papal See. What 
wealth of conquest, what magnificence of art, what glories of 
all time were gathered here to be despoiled by barbarian nor 
less by Christian hands, consumed by fire and the tooth of 
time and the wasteful passions of man through eighteen cen- 
turies, yet presenting enough still of glorious remains and 
tokens of her former greatness to enchain the affection and 
rouse the admiration and sensibility of cultivated souls over 
all the earth ! No one knows how many times the city has 
been rebuilt since the time of Christ. The remains of that 
time and the two or three centuries following — and these, 
although pitiably few, are yet more than I had supposed — are 
mostly from fifteen to twenty-five feet below the present surface, 
.and have been largely revealed by excavations chiefly made in 
the last twenty-five years. Just what treasures of architec- 
ture and art have perished in all the ages is not known, but a 
record published by Cardinal Mai even so late as 540, when 
the destruction had been going on for two centuries, mentions 
as existing at that time 324 streets, two Capitols — the Tarpeian 
and that on the Quirinal — 80 gilt statues of the gods— only 
that of Hercules remains — 66 ivory statues of the gods, 46,608 
houses, 17,097 palaces, 13,052 fountains, 3785 statues of em- 
perors and generals in bronze, 22 great equestrian statues of 
bronze — only Marcus Aurelius remains — 9026 baths, 3 1 theatres, 
and 8 amphitheatres. That even so many relics now remain is 
in good part due, it is said, to Raphael, who in the early part of 
the sixteenth century implored Pope Julius II. to " protect the 
few relics left to testify to the power and greatness of that 
divine love of antiquity whose memory was inspiration to all 
who were capable of higher things." 

Very much of the Rome of to-day is quite modern, wide 
streets lined with huge lofty buildings of stone, mostly stuccoed 
and painted yellow, the principal parts of the older portion 
lying along the low line of the Tiber and including that large 
level tract known in classical times as the Campus Martins. 
Only the ancient remains and the great and rich churches of 
the middle and later centuries and the galleries of ancient 
and more modern art are of interest to me, and these have 
been made so familiar to all the world by such a great number 
of scholars and most capable writers in all styles and repro- 
duced by famous engravers that I need not dwell upon them 



St Peter s. 325 

even to effect the purpose of these notes — that of aiding my 
imperfect memory and seeking to fix the fleeting impressions 
made upon my mind in its state of lively exaltation when find- 
ing myself after so many years of longing in the midst of these 
glorious objects. Here is the seat and heart of that venerable 
church whose wide arms embrace the world, and although its 
aged head, Pope Leo XIII., now eighty years old, no longer 
wields any temporal power and is a voluntary prisoner in his 
huge palace of the Vatican, still his spiritual sway over 200,- 
000,000 souls is, when allowance is made for the altered con- 
dition of the time, almost as complete as that enjoyed by the 
most absolute of his predecessors ; and, as a consequence, here 
in the sacred city the influence of the Catholic Church is every- 
where apparent, and religion in its prescribed and ancient 
forms seems in this Christmas week to be predominant in all 
the life of the city. Ecclesiastics of all degrees, from the well- 
kept cardinal of high and serious face down to the barefoot 
monk, are met everywhere on the streets, and the great churches, 
hung in the Christmas-time with red draperies, are thronged 
with worshippers. 

St. Peter's, where we attended services on Christmas day, 
surpasses in grandeur and magnificence all my anticipations, 
high as these had been raised. One experiences a momentary 
feeling of disappointment when, crossing the great court 
between high gleaming fountains and the noble curved colon- 
nades, the eye notices that the not altogether pleasing front 
hides the majestic dome ; but once the heavy double leathern 
curtain is pushed aside and one stands upon the marble floor 
of the interior, all is one vast and overwhelming scene of light 
and splendor, and the soul is only conscious of admiring awe. 
I had an impression, from some reading or other, that the 
interior was dusky and in parts gloomy with shade ; on the 
contrary, everywhere is a flood of mellow light from the great 
dome, so vast, so lofty that it seems a part of the sky itself. 
The floor, the walls, the massy and countless pillars are of costly 
and many-colored marbles ; the roof is vaulted and gilded ; 
not an inch of space but is adorned with gold and precious 
marbles. Colossal statues and winged angels, their size les- 
sened by the greatness of the space, shine everywhere above 
and around, gloriously bewildering, but harmonious, symmet- 
rical and beautiful. On both sides of nave and transept open 



32(3 The Size of St. Peter s. — Its Shrines. 

broad chapels, themselves as large as most modern churches, 
rich with gilding, pictures, mosaics, costly altars and the tombs 
and monuments of popes, kings, princes and many noble and 
distinguished dead, with confessionals, it is said, for every 
language spoken among Christian men. Naked figures give 
but a cold impression of this the most imposing church reared 
by the hand of man, but they may assist the mind by furnish- 
ing some data for comparison with structures within our 
knowledge. The length of St. Peter's is 613^ feet ; St. Paul's 
in London, 520^ feet ; Milan Cathedral, 443 feet ; St. Sophia, 
Constantinople, 360^ feet. These comparative sizes are 
marked on a line in the pavement of St. Peter's, whose dome 
rises on the interior 405 and on the exterior to the height of 
448 feet. The size is more effectively shown by contrasting its 
area as follows : St. Peter's, 18,000 square yards ; Milan Cathe- 
dral, 10,000 ; St. Paul's, 9350 ; St. Sophia, 8150 ; Cologne 
Cathedral, 7400. The four enormous piers supporting the 
dome enclose the shrines of the four great relics of the church — 
the lance of St. Longinus, the soldier who pierced the side of 
our Saviour, presented to Innocent VIII. by Pierre d'Aubus- 
son, Grand-Master of the Knights of Rhodes, who had it from 
Sultan Bajazet ; the head of St. Andrew, said to have been 
brought from Achaia in 1460 ; a portion of the true cross brought 
by St. Helena ; the napkin of St. Veronica or her handkerchief 
which wiped the brow of our Saviour on his way to Calvary 
and bears the impress of his countenance. These renowned 
relics are exhibited from a balcony above the statue of St. 
Veronica on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, 
but at such a great height surely nothing can be distinguished 
with any clearness. Beneath the dome rises the imposing 
gilded canopy nearly a hundred feet above the high altar, at 
which only the Pope may officiate. This altar stands over the 
tomb of St. Peter, one half of whose body is believed to lie 
enshrined here in a sarcophagus brought from the Catacomb 
near St. Sebastian, the other portion being at the Lateran. 
Also one portion of the body of St. Paul is supposed to be 
enshrined here with Peter, the rest being preserved in the 
Church of S. Paolo fuori le Mura. The descent to this con- 
fessio or shrine, one of the most sacred spots on earth to the 
Catholic mind, is by a short flight of broad marble steps, 
and on the heavy balustrade surrounding these, eighty-nine 



Statue of St. Peter. 35i7 

lamps burn perpetually, day and night. Not far away against 
the last pier on the right of the nave is seated in a chair, some 
four feet from the pavement, a rude, life-like bronze statue of 
St. Peter, its naked right foot extended within easy reach of 
the lips of the throng of worshippers, chiefly of the lower sort, 
including low-browed and debased-looking herdsmen and 
peasants from the Campagna, who kiss the big toe reverently, 
press it to their foreheads and prostrate themselves with a 
passionate fervor I have seen nowhere, save in the great Ca- 
thedral of the City of Mexico. This statue is said to have 
been cast from the old one of Jupiter Capitolinus. 

In one of the great chapels to-day is wondrous music, and 
among the voices one known as the " angel voice of Rome," that 
of an old man, high, pure and sweet. The means used to secure 
tenor voices some time ago are no longer used, I am informed, 
and this one is a survival of a cruel practice. After mass a 
procession of cardinals, prelates, canons and minor dignitaries 
shining in vestments of white and red, gold and purple and 
violet, paced along the aisles, the clouds of perfumed incense 
from the swinging censers slowly dissolving in the vast upper 
spaces in faint fragrance ; a pageant of picturesque beauty. 

St. Peter's and the adjoining palace of the Vatican stand in 
a hollow of the low range of the Janiculan Hills on the right 
bank of the Tiber, where Agrippina, the mother of Caligula, 
possessed gardens, and he, a circus in whose arena in the reign 
of Nero, when it took his name, many martyrdoms of Christians 
occurred from a.d. 54 to 68, watched by him from the adjoin- 
ing grounds, and where, according to Tacitus, he used their 
living bodies wrapped in pitch and set on fire as torches in the 
night. St. Peter, according to the traditions of the church, 
was buried in the circus of Nero, and to mark the spot and 
perpetuate the memory of the early martyrs who suffered here, 
an oratory was founded on the site of the present edifice in 
A.D. 90 by Anacletus, Bishop of Rome, who is believed to have 
been ordained by St. Peter himself, whose crucifixion is said to 
have taken place on the hill-side near by, a.d. 67. In 306 Con- 
stantine the Great began a church on the site of the old oratory, 
which, although only half the size of St. Peter's, was larger, 
says Hare, than any mediaeval cathedral except the equally 
large ones of Milan and Seville. It was 395 feet long by 212 
feet wide and was extremelv rich in relics and works of art. 



328 The Vatican Palace. 

nearly all of which were lost or wilfully destroyed when it was 
pulled down by Pope Julius II., who in 1506 began the present 
St. Peter's from designs by the great architect Bramante, 
although several changes were made by different hands during 
the one hundred and seventy-six years it was completing in its 
present form. The squatty, low and heavy dome designed by 
Michael Angelo was not built, but instead the present wonder- 
ful one planned and built by Giacomo della Porta. The cost 
of the main building of the church alone has been estimated 
at fifty million dollars, and to raise this enormous sum Julius 
II. and Leo X. resorted to the sale of indulgences, the imme- 
diate cause of the Reformation. The annual expense for 
repairs exceeds thirty thousand dollars. The temperature of 
the vast interior scarcely varies the year round from that of 
a pleasant spring day. 

Directly beside St. Peter's and connected with it is the 
Vatican Palace, the largest in the world, built in the fifth 
century for a dwelling-house for the popes, but enlarged from 
time to time, until now it embraces an area of some twenty 
acres and comprises twenty courts, eleven thousand halls, 
chapels, saloons and private apartments. Here the Pope 
resides with a household in various sorts, numbering in the time 
of Pius IX. more than two thousand persons, probably now 
reduced. The Pope no longer exercises temporal authority 
even in the city of Rome, but by a law passed by the Italian 
Parliament in 1871 this palace of the Vatican, that of the 
Lateran and the papal villa at Castel Gandolfo are secured 
the "privilege of exterritoriality/' so that they are under 
exclusive papal control. Only a few apartments here are made 
use of by the Pope, who is said to live in a very simple 
manner, the greater number being occupied by the priceless 
collections of works of art, and open to the public with slight 
restrictions. We first enter the Sistine Chapel, a beautiful 
hall 133 feet long by 45 wide, the upper portion of the walls 
decorated with frescoes by Florentine masters, Perugino, Bot- 
ticelli, Ghirlandajo, etc. The lower portions of the wall are left 
naked, it being usual on festival occasions to cover these with 
Raphael's tapestry. The entire ceiling is covered with frescoes 
by Michael Angelo representing in nine sections the creation 
of the world and man, the Temptation and Fall, the Deluge 
and the story of Noah. So far as one can see by bending the 



The Galhry of Arras. 329 

head backward to a right angle with the spine and staring 
upward in a state of half strangulation, these frescoes, with 
the prophets and sibyls at their base, are grand and nobly- 
executed compositions. Thirty years later, in 1541, the same 
master, the three pictures by Perugino which then occupied 
the space, having been erased, painted on the altar-wall the 
vast fresco of "The Last Judgment," of which I will only say 
and take the consequences, that to me it is a confused and 
horrible nightmare. Lady Eastlake writes in her " History of 
Our Lord'' that the art of Michael Angelo is " not always 
sympathetic nor comprehensible to the average mind." I am 
well enough content with this explanation of my want of en- 
joyment in almost everything in architecture, sculpture and 
painting from his hand. 

On the floor above — the second floor of the palace — are 
three apartments or stanze, whose ceilings and walls are 
adorned with the famous and delightful frescoes of Raphael, 
the king of painters, of which I most enjoyed the "Parnassus" 
on one of the walls of the Stanza della Segnatura, in which 
grouped about Apollo are the Nine Muses and on either hand 
Dante, Virgil, Petrarch, Sappho, Pindar and Horace. Be- 
sides these the third loggia or corridor of this floor is deco- 
rated with the still more famous frescoes of Raphael and his 
pupils, fifty-two in number, from the Old and New Testa- 
ments. Also in the Gallery of Arras we see with admiration 
the wonderful tapestry executed early in the fifteenth cen- 
tury in the looms of Brussels from cartoons drawn by 
Raphael. They are beautifully wrought in wool, silk and 
gold ; the scenes are from the New Testament and have been 
made familiar everywhere by countless reproductions. Many 
pieces are sadly faded, but the eye rests on them in their 
rich borders with ever-increasing pleasure. Seven of the 
original number were purchased by Charles I. of England, 
and are now shown in the South Kensington Museum. The 
following have been copied many times in tapestry in famous 
looms, and we saw them in Dresden and Vienna and else- 
where : "Paul Preaching," "Death of Ananias," "Conversion 
of St. Paul," " St Peter Healing the Lame Man in the 
Temple," " Miraculous Draught of Fishes," " Stoning of 
Stephen." Eleven great halls contain the collection of antiq- 
uities, said to be the richest in the world, where among the 



330 The Pinacoteca. 

noblest trophies of all time we see admiringly the busts of 
Zeus from Otricoli ; of Hadrian, found in his mausoleum ; of 
Antinous ; the sitting statue of Nerva ; bust of Pericles ; of 
Aspasia — the only known representation of her ; statue of Corn- 
modus on horseback ; statue called " The Genius of the Vat- 
ican," supposed to be a copy from a cupid by Praxiteles ; 
Apollo Sauroctonos, also a copy of a work of this master ; a 
fine bust of Augustus ; the Laocoon ; the Apollo Belvedere ; 
Daughter of Niobe ; Venus Anadyomene ; Sleeping Ariadne ; 
the Antinous (now called Mercury), and esteemed by many the 
most beautiful statue in the world ; the Torso Belvedere ; statue 
of Demosthenes ; Apoxyomenos, a replica of the celebrated 
bronze of Lysippus. The latter represents an athlete after ex- 
ercise scraping his arm with a strigil to remove the oil. Pliny 
describes it and states that it was brought from Greece by 
Agrippa to adorn the baths he had built for the people, and 
that Tiberius so admired it that he carried it off to his palace, 
but was forced to restore it by the loud outcries of the popu- 
lace the next time he appeared in public. So says Hare. 
We note, too, the curious colossal group of the Nile, and the 
Minerva Medica, and do not visit the Etruscan Museum or the 
library. 

On the third floor is the Pinacoteca or Gallery of Pictures, 
a not large collection, but exceedingly fine and almost all 
worthy of notice, but I can only mention in bare terms as we 
come upon them, the "Annunciation," "Adoration of the 
Magi" and " Presentation in the Temple" by Raphael, Mu- 
rillo's "Marriage of St. Catherine," Domenichino's "Com- 
munion of St. Jerome," reckoned the greatest work of this 
master, Raphael's "Transfiguration," esteemed by many good 
judges the grandest picture in the world. It was scarcely 
finished when the painter died at the untimely age of thirty- 
seven years ; it hung over his death-bed as he lay in state and 
was carried in his funeral procession. Here is his beautiful 
"Madonna di Foligno," not so impressive, perhaps, as many 
of his numerous Madonnas, but a work of such charm as no 
other painter, it seems to me, could execute. 

In the third room is Titian's " Madonna and Saints ;" 
Perugino's " Resurrection" and " Virgin and Child ;" and in 
the fourth room Andrea Sacchi's " St. Roraualdo." I must not 
omit to mention the little Cappella de Niccolo V. near the 



Church of St. John Lateran. 331 

Stanze of Raphael, whose walls are decorated with frescoes from 
the lives of Sts. Lawrence and Stephen by Fra Angelico, 
tender, pure and holy, as are all emanations of that beautiful 
soul ; nor the marvellous Barberini candelabra with reliefs on 
one of Jupiter, Juno and Mercury ; on the other Mars, Minerva 
and Venus. Curious is it, too, that the striking portrait 
statues of the Greek comic dramatists Posidippus and Me- 
nander, said to have been wrought by Cephisodotus, son of 
Praxiteles, found here in Rome under Sixtus V., had long 
been revered as saints. 

Even more venerable and historically more interesting than 
St. Peter's is the great church of St. John Lateran, facing the 
Piazza di San Giovanni on the Coelian Hill, which bears on 
its west front the proud inscription, " Omniiiin urbis ct orhis 
Ecclesiariim Mater et Caput," whose Chapter takes precedence 
even over that of St. Peter's, and where every newly elected 
pope comes for his coronation. It is a vast edifice crowded 
beyond my describing with tombs, monuments, relics, rich with 
sculpture and gilding — oppressively so — and containing many 
objects of exceeding interest. Here is the pontifical throne, 
bearing the words, '■'' Hcec est papalis sedes et pontificalis,'" and 
among the many relics enshrined under the canopy in the 
centre of the transept are said to be the skulls of Sts. Peter 
and Paul, while enclosed in the altar is the famous wooden 
table supposed to be that on which St. Peter celebrated mass 
in the house of Pudens, with whom St. Paul lodged a.d. 41 
to 50, whose family were that saint's first converts, and who 
is said to have himself suffered martyrdom under Nero. Sts. 
Peter and Paul are found constantly in intimate association 
everywhere in Rome. Above the arch of the Tribune is a 
noble head of the Saviour in mosaic of the fourth century, 
commemorating the vision of the Redeemer, who is said 
to have appeared here on the day of the consecration of 
the earlier church on this spot by Pope Sylvester and the 
Emperor Constantine, a.d. 324, looking down upon the people 
and hallowing the work with his visible presence — a face grand 
and sad in expression. From one of the chapels a door opens 
into the beautiful twelfth-century cloister of the monastery, 
whose surrounding arcades are supported by exquisite inlaid 
and twisted pillars with a fine frieze of colored marbles. The 
court thus enclosed is a garden of roses, and in the centre is a 



332 The Lateran Palace. 

rich well of the tenth century, called the ''Well of the Woman 
of Samaria." 

There are many curious traditional relics preserved in 
this delightful cloister, among them a porphyry slab upon 
which the Roman soldiers are said to have cast lots for the 
Saviour's seamless robe, columns rent by the earthquake of the 
Crucifixion, and a slab resting on pillars, shown as a measure 
of our Saviour's height, which I made to be 5 feet 11 inches. 

Fair and grand and wide-sweeping is the view from the 
broad and noble portico of St. John Lateran, including the 
Alban Hills, blue in the morning, purple in the evening 
light, sprinkled with white villages of old-time fame, the 
Sabine Mountains to the north tipped with snow, the long 
lines of the aqueducts lost in the hazy distance, and in the 
nearer view picturesque ruins and rugged fragments dotting 
the melancholy Campagna ; and under our feet the glorious 
old walls of the city and the white road of the Via Appia 
Nuova stretching interminably away in the direction of Naples. 

Adjoining the Church of St. John Lateran is the Lateran 
Palace, the residence of the popes for nearly a thousand years 
from the time of Constantine until their migration to Avignon. 
The old palace was considerably larger than the present one 
built on its site by Pope Sixtus V., 1585, and only the ancient 
Triclinium remains, while the newer erection was converted 
into a museum by Pope Gregory XVL in 1843. In a build- 
ing behind the old Triclinium, attached to a convent of Pas- 
sionist monks and erected by Sixtus V., is preserved the Scala 
Santa, a marble staircase of twenty-eight steps, supposed to 
be that of the house of Pilate, which the Saviour mounted and 
descended at the time of his trial. It is said to have been 
brought from Jerusalem by Helena, the mother of Constantine 
the Great, a.d. 326, and for fifteen hundred years has been 
the object of peculiar reverence in the Roman Church. So 
sacred is it that it can only be traversed kneeling ; no foot- 
step is permitted to profane it. Pope Clement XII. in 1730 
caused the steps to be covered with a wooden casing, repeat- 
edly renewed since, because worn out by the knees of pilgrims. 
There are openings through the wood permitting the marble 
steps to be seen ; two of them are said to be stained with the 
Saviour's blood. Pilgrims and devotees only ascend on the 
knees ; all return by a corresponding stairway on the left, 



The Scala Santa. — A Portrait of the Saviour. 333 

and visitors go up by a similar one on the right of the Scala 
Santa. We were present on a festival day, and when in the 
atrium or entrance-room, I heard a pounding noise, such as 
might be made by a drove of cattle crossing a wooden bridge, 
and found it to come from the thuds of the knees of a crowd 
of devotees swarming upward on the stairway, only halting 
now and then to kiss with effusion the wooden covering. 
Having reached the top they clattered down the lateral stair- 
way and departed to make room for still other throngs in 
uninterrupted succession. It was when toiling painfully up 
these steps that the monk, Martin Luther, seemed to hear a 
voice from heaven saying, " The just shall live by faith," and 
returning home began that divergence from the doctrines of 
the Mother Church which resulted in the Reformation and 
the great variety of Protestant sects. 

At the top of the Scala Santa is an exceedingly old chapel 
rebuilt by Nicholas III. in 1216 from one whose origin is lost 
in the night of time and certainly existing in a.d. 578, and so 
sacred that none but the Pope can officiate at its altar, and 
never open to others save on the morning before Palm Sun- 
day, when the canons of the Lateran come in solemn pro- 
cession to worship, with torches and a veiled crucifix, and 
even then none but the clergy are allowed to cross its thresh- 
old. Above the altar is the inscription, " JVon est in tota 
sanctior urbe locus." We look through gratings into the relic 
chamber, containing the reputed sandals of our Saviour, 
fragments of the true cross, and above the altar a beautiful 
silver tabernacle made to contain the surpassing relic whence 
comes the peculiar sanctity of this chapel. This is a portrait 
of our Saviour placed here by Pope Innocent III. in the year 
1200, held by the Roman Church to be authentic, the painting 
of which, begun by St. Luke, was finished by an angel, whence 
comes its name, " Acheiropoeton," or the "picture made with- 
out hands." In the dusky light within nothing is visible with 
any distinctness, and we can only stare through the gratings 
into a gloom where these objects are suggested rather than 
seen. In the centre of the square before St. John Lateran 
stands an obelisk, the oldest object in the city, erected 1740 
B.C. in the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis in Egypt and 
brought by Constantine the Great to Alexandria, and thence 
by his son Constantius to Rome to ornament the Circus 



334 The Servian and Aurelian Walls of Rome. 

Maximus, and afterward in 1588 moved to its present position. 
At this time it was broken, so that a portion had to be cut off, 
but it is still 150 feet high. The old Romans seem to have 
made nothing of transporting these huge monoliths from 
Egypt to ornament the city, more than half a score being $till 
erect in the different squares. 

Each of the seven hills of Rome was surrounded by a wall 
from a time antecedent to history, but more than five hundred 
years before Christ, in the reign of Servius TuUius, as the 
tradition is, that king included the whole within one massive 
wall which bears his name and is known as the Servian Wall, 
only a few portions of which remain. As the power of the city 
grew and its empire extended, since it had no enemies at hand 
to fear, it less and less needed the protection of walls, and they 
were pulled down ; but toward the close of the second century 
after Christ its decline had well begun, its foes grew threaten- 
ing, and so for more complete protection from the invasion of 
the Germans and other northern races, the Emperor Aureli- 
anus, A.D. 270, began, and his successor, Probus, a. d. 280, com- 
pleted, the wonderfully massive circuit of gigantic masonry, 
twelve miles in length, the greater part of which now exists, a 
striking monument of Roman power and architectural skill, 
enclosing the city on both sides the Tiber. The Aurelian 
wall is some 12 feet thick and from 20 to 40 feet high, built 
of tufa concrete mixed with broken brick and faced with 
triangular bricks one and one-half inches thick. A sentinel's 
passage runs all around formed in the thickness of the wall, 
and at regular intervals of about 45 feet tall square towers 
containing three stories of chambers rose, lighted by windows 
on the city side, and on the outer side pierced with small slits 
for shooting through. This wall suffered much injury from 
the repeated attacks of the Goths and was several times 
restored, especially by Theodoric, about a.d. 500, and by 
Belisarius, a.d. 560, and throughout the middle ages by the 
popes. A writer in the ninth century reckons fourteen gates 
in all and three hundred and eighty-three towers ; the fourteen 
gates still exist, but a great many of the towers have disap- 
peared. For ages, until the completion of the railway from 
the North, the greater number of travellers and pilgrims to 
Rome entered the city at the northern gate, called Porta del 
Popolo, leading into the square of that name, looked down 



Piazza del Popolo. — The Corso. 335 

upon from the Pincian Hill, of which I have spoken above. 
This Piazza del Popolo is itself a spot of exceeding interest, 
surrounded as it is by buildings of historic and sacred fame ; 
among them the Augustine Convent adjoining the fine church 
of St. Maria del Popolo, where Luther resided when in Rome, 
celebrating mass here on his arrival after he had prostrated 
himself on the earth, saying, " Hail, sacred Rome ! thrice 
sacred for the blood of the martyrs shed here," and where he 
also celebrated mass for the last time before departing for 
Wittenberg. 

In the centre of the Piazza stands an obelisk brought to 
Rome and set up in honor of Apollo, of which Merivale says : 
" Apollo was the patron of the spot which had given a name 
to the great victory of Actium ; Apollo himself, it was pro- 
claimed, had fought for Rome and for Octavius on that 
auspicious day : the same Apollo, the Sun-god, had shuddered 
in his bright career at the murder of the Dictator, and terrified 
the nations by the eclipse of his divine countenance." There- 
fore, "besides building a temple to Apollo on the Palatine 
Hill, the Emperor Augustus sought to honor him by trans- 
planting to the Circus Maximus an obelisk from Heliopolis in 
Egypt. This flame-shaped column was a symbol of the sun, 
and originally bore a blazing orb upon its summit. It is 
interesting to trace an intelligible motive for the first introduc- 
tion into Europe of these grotesque and unsightly monuments 
of Eastern superstition." 

The Corso, upward of a mile in length, and the handsomest 
street in Rome, begins at the Piazza del Popolo and ends at 
the steps of the Capitol ; it is narrow, but lined with the best 
shops, palaces, and private houses, and sometimes opens into a 
broad piazza. It lies in the neighborhood of the Tiber, fol- 
lowing the ancient Via Flaminia, with the Campus Martins 
on the right, now occupied thickly with mean mediaeval 
houses. The tall houses lining the Corso are crowded with 
balconies, story above story, for watching the sports of the 
Carnival which occur here, including the races, now discon- 
tinued, whence its name is derived. Horses without riders 
dashed along its full length, stimulated by spurs fastened to 
their shoulders by loose thongs, and were brought to a stand 
at the lower end by large curtains of heavy drapery let down 
across the street. 



336 Palazzo Borghese. — Church of St. Maria m Via Lata. 

A little way out of the Piazza del Popolo, a cross-street to 
the right leads to the imposing Palazzo Borghese, where we 
visited its picture gallery, said to be the finest private gallery 
in Rome, and saw among other delightful pictures Raphael's 
" Entombrhent," Dosso Dossi's " The Sorceress Circe," 
Correggio's " Danae," Sebastian del Piombo's " The Flagella- 
tion," the beautiful and joyous "Four Seasons" by Fr. 
Albani, and, chief of all, the glorious " Sacred and Profane 
Love" of Titian. Still further on the right, on the small 
piazza of that name, is the little church of St. Lorenzo in 
Lucina, made memorable by the noble painting of the " Cruci- 
fixion," by Guido Reni, over its high altar, of which Browning 

says : 

"... beneath the piece 
Of Master Guido Reni, Christ on cross, 
Second to naught observable in Rome." 

A little farther on a narrow street soon leads, on the left 
of the Corso to the wonderful Fountain of Trevi, occupying 
one end of the gigantic Palazzo Poll, from which it seems 
to pour its enormous volume of water, called Aqua Virgo, 
brought from a source fourteen miles distant, by Agrippa 
to supply his baths at the Pantheon 27 B.C. The subterra- 
nean channel supplying this gigantic fountain also supplies 
the great fountains of the Piazzas di Spagna, Navona and 
Farnese, and the spring yields daily upward of thirteen mill- 
ion cubic feet of clear sparkling water said to be the best in 
Rome. Here, too, is the shop of the famous jeweller Castellani, 
where we saw a fine collection of ancient Etruscan works of 
art on which he models his own beautiful work. I purchased 
of him a pin of Etruscan design as a Christmas present to 
Betty. Well along the Corso on the right is the interesting 
Church of St. Maria in Via Lata, where a little chapel is shown, 
in which, says Mrs. Jameson, the tradition has been handed 
down from the first ages, St. Luke the Evangelist wrote, and 
painted the effigy of the Virgin Mother of God. The base- 
ment of this church is shown as the actual house in which St. 
Paul lodged when in Rome. It belonged, says Hare, " to 
Martialis, whom a beautiful tradition indentifies with the 
child who was especially blessed by the Divine Master when 
he said, 'Suffer little children to come unto me,' and who, ever 
after a faithful follower of Christ, bore the basket of bread and 



Palazza Doria — Palazzo Bonaparte. — Church of II Gesii. 337 

fishes in the wilderness, and served at table during the Last 
Supper." A fountain is shown in the crypt as having miracu- 
lously sprung up in answer to St. Paul's prayers that he 
might have water to baptize his disciples. There extends 
along on the right the vast Palazza Doria, where in handsome 
rooms, ornamented with many valuable and deeply interesting 
relics, we see among a great many poorish pictures the fine 
ones of an "Annunciation" by Filippo Lippi, " Holy Family" 
by Sassoferrato, " Madonna" by Guido Reni, " Landscape with 
Temple of Apollo," by Claude Lorraine, and " The Misers," 
by Quentin Matsys. Near by is the huge palace of the famous 
old Roman family of the Colonna, built near the site of the 
ancient fortress so celebrated in the middle ages, in the warfare 
the Colonnas carried on with the stout race of the Orsini. 
One tower of the old structure still remains. Farther on to 
the right is the Palazzo Bonaparte, where Laetitia Bonaparte, 
the mother of Napoleon I., died in 1836 ; then the castellated 
palace of the Republic of Venice, now the residence of the 
Austrian ambassador ; and opposite, the palace of Torlonia, 
the ennobled Roman banker. Behind the palace of the 
Republic of Venice is the large and sumptuous church of II 
Gesu, its magnificent altar of St. Ignatius, with a group 
of the Trinity ; the Almighty holding in his hand a globe of 
lapis-lazuli, said to be the largest piece in existence. A " Te 
Deum" is sung in this church on December 31st for the mercies 
of the closing year, which I attended, and was greatly 
impressed, not only with the music, but with the gradual 
lighting of the three thousand wax candles ; those high above 
the lofty altar and under the roof, reached by men crawling 
far out on ladders and by long poles supporting torches. 
This is the Church of the Jesuits, as its name implies, and 
adjoining is the Convent of the Gesu, the residence of the 
General of their order and the centre of its religious life. 
The four rooms in which St. Ignatius Loyola lived and died 
are here, and his body lies beneath the altar in the church 
bearing his name, in an urn of gilt bronze adorned with pre- 
cious stones ; and a great ceremony takes place here on the 
day of his feast, July 31st. In one of the rooms he occupied 
in the convent, now a chapel, is the autograph engagement to 
live under the same laws of obedience, poverty and chastity 
signed Laynez Francis Xavier and Ignatius Loyola. 
22 



338 Piazza del Campidoglio. — Church of Ai-a-Cceli. 

We are now near the southern end of the Corso, and turning 
into a narrow street on the right, soon find ourselves in a 
bright, open space whence a broad flight of one hundred and 
twenty-four steps leads up to the Piazza del Campidoglio, or 
Square of the Capitol, which occupies the very sunnmit of the 
Capitoline Hill, where stood the great temple of Jupiter Capi- 
tolinus, to which the long triumphal processions were wont to 
climb from the Forum below. Here stood in the early ages 
of Rome many another temple to the several gods, superb in 
richest adornments ; indeed, all this summit was crowded with 
the noblest buildings man could raise in honor of the supernal 
powers. This hill was known in very early times as the Mons 
Tarpeius, from the familiar legend of the treachery of Tarpeia, 
but later the name Rupe Tarpeia was only applied to a cliff 
on the western slope. In the hollow between the two low 
peaks of which the Capitol consists, now raised and levelled to 
make the Square of the Capitol, Brutus addressed the people 
after the murder of Julius Caesar, and on the site of the ex- 
ceedingly interesting Church of Ara-Coeli on the side of this 
Square, Romulus in the beginning of Rome reared the Temple 
of Jupiter Feretrius, the goal of the triumphal procession and 
the depository of the spolia opima^ and up the steps now leading 
to this church, nigh two thousand years ago, great Julius 
Caesar climbed on his knees after his first triumph. 

This is Christmas week, and so we are able to witness in the 
Church of Ara-Coeli the exercises connected with the exhi- 
bition of the Bambino or holy infant, " Santissimo Bambino 
d' Ara-Coeli," during this season shown in the " Presepio," a word 
meaning simply, manger, but used by the Church to signify 
the birth of Christ. In one of the chapels a scene is shown as 
on the stage of a little theatre, and on it, in life size and due 
perspective, as if in a grotto with a skilful pastoral landscape 
behind it, "we see in the foreground the Virgin Mary seated 
with Joseph at her side and the miraculous Bambino — a fresh- 
colored doll, crowned, wrapt closely in cloth of gold and 
silver and sparkling with jewels ; behind, an ox and an ass. 
At one side kneel the shepherds and Eastern kings in worship, 
and far in the background are seen shepherds guarding their 
flocks lying under palm-trees or feeding on green hillocks 
bright in the sunlight. Midway in the scene is a crystal foun- 
tain wrought of glass, with figures of sheep made of real wool, 



Exhibition of the BamMno. 33!J 

and women carrying baskets of real oranges and other fruits 
on their heads. Overhead looks down God the Father, well- 
pleased, with cherubs and angels playing on instruments" — 
altogether a most pleasing scene and witnessed by great 
throngs of people. To-day a platform is erected, some feet 
from the entrance to this chapel, from which children declaim 
short pieces in verse and prose addressed to the Bambino or 
in explanation of the scene, these having been written for them 
by the priests or some friend, and I saw many kind-faced 
priests wrought into mild excitement and smilingly approving 
when tone and gesture were apt, tender and graceful, as they 
often were. A pretty sight altogether. When not thus pub- 
licly exhibited on festival days the Bambino is shut up in the 
sacristy, where it is attended by servants of its own, who accom- 
pany it when it goes out in its own carriage to visit the sick, 
with whom it used to be left for a while that it might work a 
miracle of healing. This is no longer permitted, because it is 
said a bold, bad woman made another doll of the size of the 
Santissimo, and feigning sickness, got permission to have it 
left with her, put its clothes on the false image and sent it 
back to Ara-Coeli. But see how the devices of naughty people, 
including women, are brought to naught ! That very night, 
in a howling storm, the good monks were awakened by a 
tremendous ringing and knocking at the west door, and has- 
tening found the naked, cold figure of the true baby, who is 
not allowed out alone any more. 

On a wall of the church are hung hundreds of small votive 
tablets bearing pictures of persons rescued from imminent 
dangers by the intercession of some saint or other to whom 
prayer for succor had been made. Those in the most fright- 
ful circumstances of danger are shown in the attitude of 
rescue. For instance, a gentleman of a red face, staring eyes 
and wildly sprawling limbs is shown arrested in mid-air on 
his way down from the top of a lofty building, from a window 
of which the Virgin Mary, whose help he had implored, looks 
calmly and modestly, as if she regarded arresting the power 
of gravitation a very small matter indeed. Noticing a fine, 
handsome Italian boy looking earnestly on the picture of an 
unfortunate under the wheel of a prodigious cart, with St. 
Paul looking on, I bade Frattini ask him if this exceedingly 
imperilled individual was saved alive. "Si, Signor," he an- 



340 Statues in the Square of the Capitol, 

swered, with a beautiful trust shining in his dark eyes. The 
remains of St. Helena are said to repose in the chapel in the 
east transept called from her name, and enclosed within the 
present altar is one with the inscription ^'- Ara Frimoge7iiti Dei," 
said to have been erected by Augustus in the twelfth century. 
The legend is, that the Sibyl of Tibur here appeared to that 
emperor, whom the senate proposed to raise to the rank of a 
god, and revealed to him a vision of the Virgin and her Son. 
Hence the name of the church, " Church of the Altar of 
Heaven." 

To-day on the broad flight of steps leading up to the Square 
is a multitude of vendors of all sorts of little articles of a 
religious kind, especially such as relate to the Madonna ; the 
cheapest quality of colored prints, crosses and medals of 
pewter, little wax dolls and sheep, etc., all sold at the uniform 
price of one baiocco, equal to three-fourths of an English penny. 
At the left of the stairway, half way up in a sort of little gar- 
den, is a cage in which two wolves are kept in memory of the 
foster-nurse of Romulus and Remus, and at the top the colos- 
sal statues of Castor and Pollux, ordered to be wrought to 
commemorate the battle of Lake Regillus, where they fought 
for Rome, and after riding to the city to give tidings of the 
victory and watering their horses at the spring of Aqua Argen- 
tina by the Temple of Vesta in the Forum, spurred their horses 
heavenward and disappeared from the sight of man. At either 
end of the parapet is an ancient milliarium, or milestone, 
being the first and seventh on the Appian Way, and since the 
first was found in position it showed that the distance on the 
various roads was reckoned from the gates and not from the 
centre of the city, as had been supposed. 

In the centre of the Square stands in noble majesty the 
famous equestrian statue of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, 
preserved from destruction at the hands of the Church during 
the middle ages, it is said, because it was thought to be that 
of Constantine. He sits his warlike charger with a warrior's 
ease and confidence, clad in the antique Roman garb, his 
right hand extended in command, his countenance grand, 
high and serene, like the noble soul within. Interesting, too, 
is the porphyry statue of Rome in the form of Minerva wear- 
ing the Phrygian cap of liberty, and the Tower of the Capitol 
with its great bell of Viterbo, rung only to announce the death 

Fifth line on this page should read : 
said, since the twelfth century, to have been erected by 
Augustus. 



Museum of the Capitol. — The Alamertine Prisons. 341 

of a sovereign or the opening of the Carnival, events appar- 
ently of equal importance in the Roman mind. 

On the east side of the Square of the Capitol stands the 
Museum of the Capitol, where we saw many famous objects 
of ancient art, dwelling with admiration on the Greek statues 
of the Venus of the Capitol, Cupid and Psyche, the Antinous 
of the Capitol, the Faun of Praxiteles — the marble faun of 
Hawthorne's story — the Amazon, the Apollo, the Juno, the 
bust of M. Junius Brutus, the assassin of Julius Caesar, the 
Dying Gladiator, now called the Wounded Gaul, who, pre- 
ferring death to slavery, has fatally wounded himself in the 
breast, the two life-like Centaurs, and in one of the Halls of 
the Conservators the bronze Wolf of the Capitol, dedicated 
B.C. 299, bearing the marks of a stroke of lightning inflicted 
in the time of Cicero. 

Let us now descend to the Forum by the stairway at the 
northeast of the Square of the Capitol, stopping at the foot of 
the stairs and entering the low church of St. Pietro in Carcere 
on the left, to see the old Mamertine Prisons, excavated cen- 
turies before Christ in the solid rock. They consist of two 
dungeons, one above the other ; and anciently prisoners were 
let down through a hole into the upper one, a villainous 
chamber 16 feet high, 30 long and 22 wide, and from it through 
a similar opening, into the still viler den below. This prison 
plays an important part in Roman history far back into the 
years of the Republic, and is thought to be the oldest structure 
in the city. A modern staircase and door now admit visitors 
to both chambers, and there are remains of a still earlier flight 
of steps, called the Scalce Gevwnice — named so from the groans 
of prisoners — up which the bodies were dragged to be exposed 
to the insults of the populace or thrown into the Tiber. By 
these steps Cicero came forth to announce to the throng in 
the Forum the execution of the Catiline conspirators in the 
one word vixerunt. The lower dungeon where these executions 
occurred was called robur, and in it the decemvirs Appius 
Claudius and Oppius committed suicide B.C. 449, and here 
Jugurtha was starved to death by Marius. It was customary 
for the victorious general, to whom a triumph had been 
decreed, as he moved up the slope to the Temple of Jupiter on 
the Capitol, to pause in the portico of the Temple before 
entering, until word should be brought to him that such of his 



342 The Forum. 

captives as he had selected had been executed in the Mamer- 
tine Prison. Thus the brave Vercingetorix was executed by 
Julius Caesar in his triumph for the conquest of Gaul, and 
Simon Bar Gioras, the last brave defender of Jerusalem, dur- 
ing the triumph of Titus. The further interest attaches to 
this prison of being the one in which Sts. Peter and Paul are 
believed to have been confined for nine months to a pillar still 
shown. The fountain of pure water beneath the floor is 
attributed to the prayers of St. Peter for water in which to 
baptize his jailers, but Plutarch speaks of it as existing in 
the time of Jugurtha, nearly two hundred years before. The 
Roman Catholic Church believes that Peter and Paul addressed 
their farewell letters to the Christian world from this prison, 
that of the former being 2d St. Peter and that of Paul 2d Tim- 
othy. A few steps to the right and we are standing in the 
Roman Forum on the Via Sacra in front of the Arch of 
Septimius Severus, and all about are the more or less dis- 
tinguishable ruins of the successive religions and civilizations 
of nearly three thousand years. 

!):* H: * * * * * 

My pen here falls from my hand ; I can write no more. 



Died at the Hotel Quirinale, Rome, January 5th, 1890, of 
typhoid fever, Elizabeth Graham, only remaining child of 
James Hale and Mary Field Bates, aged sixteen years. 



Although after this bereavement we travelled far in many 
lands — not returning home until the following September — 
so thick a cloud of sorrow darkened the way that I had no 
courage for anything, not even these poor notes. 



INDEX. 



Abbotsford, the Home of Scott, 68. 

Aix-la-Chapelle, 210 — its Cathedral, 210 ; the Cathedral Treasury, 211 — its 
Relics, 212 ; Relics in the Churches of St. Adalbert and St. John the Bap- 
tist and in the Free Abbey of Cornelimuenster, 213. 

Amsterdam, 130 ; Royal Palace, 132 ; Ryks Museum, 132 — the Rembrandt 
Room, 133. 

Andermatt, 167 ; St. Gothard Pass, 168. 

Antwerp, 121 ; Cathedral of Notre Dame, 121 ; Museum of Paintings, 122 ; 
the Bourse, 122 ; Church of St. Jacques, 123 ; Rubens' House, 123 ; Na- 
tional Bank Building, 123 ; Musee Plantin-Moretus, 123 ; the Steen, 124 ; 
Churches of St. Andrew and St. Paul— their Works of Art, 125. 

Ayr, 30 ; Burns' Cottage, 30 ; Alloway Kirk, 31 ; Burns' Monument, 32 ; 
Tam o' Shanter Inn, 33. 

Belfast, 21 ; Attend a Presbyterian Church, 24 ; the Museum, 25. • 

Berlin, 137; " Unter den Linden," 138; Royal Palace, 138; the Old 

Museum, 139. 
Berne, 1S9 ; the Ogre Fountain, 190 ; the Cathedral, 190 ; a Curious Old 

Clock, 191. 
Bingen, 215 ; the Famous Vineyards of the Rhine, 215 ; German National 

Monument, 216. 
Black Forest, 156. 

Brieg, 174 ; a Funeral Procession, 174. 
Bruges, 119 ; Cathedral of St. Sauveur. 119 ; Hospital of St. John, 120 ; 

Church. of St. Basile, 120. 
Brussels, ill ; Palais de Justice, iii ; Hotel de Ville. 112; Palais des 

Beaux Arts, 112 ; Place Royale, 114 ; Church of St. Jacques sur Cauden- 

berg, 114; the Manikin Fountain, 114 ; Battle-Field of Waterloo. 114; 

Mound of the Belgian Lion, 115. 
Buda-Pesth, 265 ; Call on a Niece of Louis Kossuth, 265. 

Carrickfergus Castle, 25. 

Chamonix, 176; Mont Blanc, 177;, Fran9ois Devouasoud, the Famous 

Mountain Guide, 178 ; Jacques Balmat, 179. 
Charlottenburg, 139 ; Royal Palace, 139 ; Hohenzollern Museum, 140. 
Cheviot Hills, 73. 

Chillon Castle, 1S4 — Bonnivard's Dungeon, 184. 
Clachan of Aberfoyle, 38. 
Coblentz, 203 ; Castle of Ehrenbreitstein, 204. 



344 Index. 

Cologne, 204 — its Cathedral, 205 ; Bones of the Magi, 207 ; the Cathedral's 
Relics, 208 — its Peal of Bells, 208 ; the Gurzenich, 208 ; Churches of St. 
Gereon, St. Maria im Capitol, and St. Ursula, 209. 

Constance, 159 — its Cathedral, 159. 

Constantinople, 239 ; a Night of Discordant Sounds, 240 ; Scutari — its 
Golgotha, 241 ; the Howling Dervishes, 242; Sultan Abdul Hamed II., 
245 ; the Sakmlik, 245 ; Cortege of the Sultan, 246 ; the Sultan Reviews 
his Troops, 247 ; Classical Ground, 248 ; Exaggeration of Travellers, 249 ; 
the Dancing Dervishes, 250; Grand Bazar, 251; Mosques of Ahmet, 
Solyman the Magnificent and St. Sophia, 252-254 ; Expounders of the 
Koran, 255 ; the Dogs of the City, 255 ; the Old Seraglio, 256 ; a Turkish 
Warehouse and " Holy Moses," 257 ; DeAmicis' Description of the Pass- 
ing Crowd of People on the Bridge, 258-263. 

Cork, 8 ; "The Shandon Bells," 9 ; Blarney Castle, 9 ; the Blarney-Stone, 
ID ; " The Groves of Blarney," 11 ; a Drive to St. Ann's, 12. 

Coventry, go ; the Three Tall Spires of Coventry, gi ; St. Mary's Guildhall, 
gi ; a Drive to Rosehill, 92, 

Darmstadt, 152 ; the Bergstrasse, 152. 

Delft, 129 ; Monuments to William of Orange and Admirals Tromp and 

Piet Hein, 129. 
Derby, 88 ; All Saints' Church, 88. 

Doune Castle, 43 — " Keek into the Draw-well, Janet," 43. 
Drachenfels, 214. 
Dresden, 143— its Palace, 144 ; the Roman Catholic Court Church, 144 ; 

Picture Gallery, 145 ; Dresden Porcelains, 146. 
Dryburgh Abbey, 70. 
Dublin, 16 ; Phoenix Park, 16 ; Nelson Monument, 17 ; Bank of Ireland, 

17 ; House of Lords, 17; Trinity College, 17; Brewery of Guinness & 

Co., 18 ; the Castle, ig ; St. Patrick's Cathedral, ig ; Christ Church 

Cathedral, 20. 
Dumbarton Castle, 34. 
Dumfries, 28 ; Statue of Burns, 28 — House where he Died, 28 — his Tomb, 

2g ; Globe Hotel, 2g ; Some Objects of Interest in the Town, 30. 
Dunblane Cathedral, 43. 
Dunluce Castle, 23. 
Durham Cathedral, 75. 

Ecclefechan, 26 ; Carlyle Cottage, 26 ; the Carlyles, 27 ; Carlyle's Grave, 27. 

Edinburgh, 44 ; General View of the City, 45 ; John Knox's House, 46 ; 
Holyrood Palace, 47 — Picture Gallery and Queen Mary's Rooms, 48 — the 
Murder of Rizzio, 4g ; the Chapel Royal, 4g ; Funeral of the Earl of 
Caithness, 50 ; National Museum of Antiquities, 51; Visit the Castle, 51 — 
Crown Room and Queen Mary's Room, 52 ; " Mons Meg," 53 ; a Drive 
to Calton Hill, 53 ; Arthur's Seat, 53 ; the "Queen's Drive," 53 ; Mus- 
chett's Cairn, 53 ; Craigmillar Castle, 54 ; an Article on the Late Earl 
of Caithness, 54-5g ; Attend Morning Session of the General Assembly 
of the Church of Scotland, 59 ; National Picture Gallery, 60 ; Rosslyn 



Index. 345 

Chapel, 6i ; Rosslyn Castle, 6i ; a Ramble Over the Grounds of Sir 
James Drummond, 62 ; Dalkeith House, 62 ; Morning Service at St. 
Giles' Church, 63 ; a Walk through th2 Old Parts of the City, 64 ; Advo- 
cates' Library, 66. 

Florence, 286 ; a Brief History of the City, 287 — its Architecture, 288 ; the 
New Palaces Along the Lungarno, 289 ; Pitti Palace, 289 — its Silver 
Chamber, 290 ; Palazzo Vecchio, 290 ; Statuary in the Tribuna of the 
Uffizi, 291 — Some of the Paintings, 292 — Famous Masters, 293 — Rare 
Objects of Antiquity, 294 — the Marble Sarcophagi, 295 ; the Cascine, 296 ; 
the Drive to Fiesole, 296 ; Boccaccio Villa, 296 ; Galileo, 296 ; Piazza 
della Signoria, 297 ; Loggia di Lanzi, 297 ; the Cathedral Santa Maria del 
Fiore, 298 ; the Bell Tower, 299 ; the Baptistery, 299 — its Bronze Doors, 
300 ; a Reminder of Thanksgiving-Day, 300 — Preparations, 301 — Diffi- 
culties in Obtaining Cranberry Sauce and Pumpkin-Pie, 301 — Success at 
Last, and a Bounteous Dinner, 302 — " For this Occasion Only," 303 ; 
Monastery of Certosa di Val d'Ema, 303 ; Son of Hiram Powers the 
Sculptor, 304 — Reception at Mrs. Powers' Villa, 304 — "A Tale of a Nose," 
305 ; Church of Santa Croce, 306 — its Frescoes and Monuments, 306 ; 
Church of Or San Michele, 307 — its Statues, 307 ; Church of San Lorenzo, 
308 — the Laurentian Library, 309 — Chapel of the Princes, 309 ; Churches 
of Santa Maria Novella, San Spirito and Carmine, 310 ; Legend of San 
Miniato, 311 ; Monastery of San Marco, 311 — the " Brothers of Mercy," 
312; National Museum, 313; Academy of Fine Arts, 314; Protestant 
Cemetery, 314 ; Lines on the Death of Theodore Parker, 314 ; a Perform- 
ance of " Roberto el Diabolo" at the Opera House, 315. 

Frankfort-on-the-Main, 149 ; Gutenberg Monument, 149 ; Visit the House 
of Goethe's Father, 149 ; Romerberg Market-Place, 149 ; Jews' Street, 
150. 

Fiibourg, 192 ; the Organ in the Church of St. Nicholas, 192— an Organ 
Recital, 193. 

Geneva, 180— its Watch-making Industry, iSi ; House of John Calvin, 182 
—a Vain Search for his Grave, 182 ; Villa Diodati, 182 ; Voltaire's 
Chateau, 182 ; Musee Ariana, 183 ; Monument to Duke Charles H. of 
Brunswick, 183. 

Ghent, 116; the Bell Roland, 116 ; Cathedralof St. Bavon, 116— its Paintings, 
117 ; Hotel de Ville, 118 ; Statue of Jacques van Artevelde, 118 ; " Mad 
Meg," 118; the " Beguinages," 118. 

Giant's Causeway, 22. 

Glasgow, 34 — its Cathedral, 34. 

Hague, The, 127 ; the Mauritshuis and its Picture Gallery, 128 ; Baron 
Steengracht's Collection of Paintings, 12S ; a Noble Park, 129— the 
" House in the Wood," 130. 

Heidelberg, 216— its Castle, 217 ; the Great Tun, 217 ; Wines, 218 ; the 
University, 218. 

Homburg, 150— its Springs. 150; the Cursaal, 151 ; the Saalburg, 152. 



346 Index. 

Interlaken, 194 ; Amateur Tourists, 194. 

Jedburgh, 71 — its Abbey, 72. 

Kenilworth Castle, 92. 

Killarney, 13 ; Muckross Abbey, 14 ; Lakes of Killarney, 15 ; Innisfallen, 
15 ; Ross Island, 15. 

Lausanne, 186 — its Cathedral, 186. 

Lauterbrunnen, 195 ; the Ranz des Vaches, 195 ; the Jungfrau, 196 ; Staub- 

bach Falls, 196 ; Giessbach Falls, 196 ; a Wonderful Canon, 196. 
Leeds, 85. 
Lichfield, 88 — its Cathedral, 89 ; House of Dr. Johnson, 89 ; Three Crowns 

Inn, 90. 
Loch Katrine, 37. 

Loch Leven, 64— its Castle, 65 ; Priory of Port St. Mary, 65. 
Loch Lomond, 35. 
London, loi ; "Macbeth" at the Lyceum Theatre, loi ; House in which 

Carlyle Died, loi ; Westminster Abbey, 102 ; "Lohengrin" at the Royal 

Italian Opera House, 103 ; Hear Mr. Spurgeon Preach, 103 — Description 

of the Great Preacher, 104 ; National Gallery, 105 ; Hyde Park, 105 ; 

Henley Regattas, 105 ; Tower of London, loS. 
Lucerne, 162 ; the Lion of Lucerne, 163 ; Chapel to William Tell, 163 ; View 

from the Summit of the Rigi, 164. 
Lugano, 168 ; the Church of the Old Monastery of Santa Maria degli Angioli, 

168 — its Frescoes, 168. 

Marburg, 148 — its Castle, 148. 

Marken, 133 ; Quaint Customs and Costumes, 135. 

Melrose Abbey, 67. 

Metz, 198 — its Cathedral, igg ; the Public Cemetery, 199. 

Mont Blanc, 175. 

Mount Pilatus — Scene from its Summit, 197. 

Mount Soracte, 317 — " Ad Thaliarchum," 318. 

Munich, 226 ; the Old Pinakothek, 226 ; the New Pinakothek, 228 ; the 

Old Palace, 229 ; the Brauhaus, 229 ; Training of the Young Men of the 

German Empire, 231. 

Napoleon's Great Road, 171. 

Neuchatel, 187 ; Legislation in a Chateau, 187 ; Municipal Museum and Pic- 
ture Gallery, 188 ; Ancestors of Count Louis, 188. 

Neuhausen — Falls of the Rhine, 157. 

Newcastle-on-the-Tyne, 74 ; Church of St. Nicholas, 74. 

Nuremberg, 220 ; the Castle, 222— its Instruments of Torture, 222 ; an An- 
cient Guillotine, 224. 

Old Coach Roads, 86. 
On a Coach-Top, 78. 



Index. 347 

Potsdam, 140 — its Palace, 140— Rooms of Frederick the Great, 140 — his 
Tomb, 141 ; Park and Palace of San Souci, 141 ; the Orangery, 142. 

Queenstown, 7. 

Ratisbon, 224 ; the Walhalla, 224. 

Ravine of Gondo, 172. 

Rome, 319 ; Piazza of the Monte Cavallo, 320 ; Pincian Hill. 320 ; View of 
the Surroundings of Rome, 321 ; Seven Hills of Rome, 322 — their Names, 
323 ; the Past of the Eternal City, 324 ; St. Peter's, 325 — its Size, 326 — 
its Shrines, 326 ; Statue of St. Peter, 327 ; Vatican Palace, 328 — Sistine 
Chapel, 32S — Gallery of Arras, 329 — the Pinacoteca, 330 ; Church of St. 
John Lateran, 331 ; Lateran Palace, 332 ; the Scala Santa, 332 ; Portrait 
of the Saviour, 333 ; the Servian and Aurelian Walls of Rome, 334 ; 
Piazza del Popolo, 335 ; the Corso, 335 ; Palazzo Borghese, 336 ; Church 
of St. Lorenzo in Lucina, 336 ; Fountain of Trevi, 336 ; Church of St. 
Maria in Via Lata, 336 ; Palazza Doria, 337 ; Palazzo Bonaparte, 337 ; 
Church of II Gesu, 337 ; Piazza del Campidoglio, 338 ; Church of Ara- 
Coeli, 33S — Exhibition of the Bambino, 339 ; Statues in the Square of the 
Capitol, 340 ; Museum of the Capitol, 341 ; the Mamertine Prisons, 341 ; 
the Forum, 342. 

Schaffhausen, 15S— its Cathedral's Big Bell, 15S ; Castle of Munot, 158. 

Scheveningen, 129. 

Sheffield, 86. 

Simplon Pass, 173 ; the Hospice, 173. 

Stirling, 38 — its Castle, 39 ; Argyle's Lodging, 41 ; " Mar's Work," 41 ; 
Statue of Robert Bruce, 41 ; the Bore Stone, 41 ; Gillies Hill, 42 ; Ruins 
of Cambus-Kenneth Abbey, 42 ; Monument to William Wallace, 42. 

Strassburg, 153 ; the Cathedral, 153— its Famous Clock, 154 ; Monument 
to Marshal Saxe, 154 ; Pdic de foie gras, 155. 

Stratford-on-Avon, 95 ; Attend Morning Service at the Church of the Holy 
Trinity, 96 ; Site of New Place, the House of Shakespere, 96 — his Statue, 
98 — Grave, 98 — Bust, 98— Birthplace, 99 — the Stratford Portrait, 99 ; 
Anne Hathaway's Cottage, 100. 

Stresa, 169 ; Our Eccentiic Coachman, 170. 

Treves, 199 ; Remains of the Porta Nigra, Roman Palace and Public Baths. 
200 ; a Library of Rare and Valuable Books, 201 ; Cathedral of St. Peter 
and St. Helen, 202 ; the Holy Coat, 202 ; Porcelain Stoves, 203 ; a Bed- 
Poultice, 203. 

Trossachs, The, 37. 

Venice, 266 ; the Grand Canal, 267 ; Piazza of St. Mark, 267 ; Search for the 
American Consul, 26S ; Cathedral of St. Mark, 268 ; the Gondolas, 270 ; 
Riallo Bridge, 271 ; the Ghetto, 271 ; Scenes Along the Grand Canal, 272 ; 
Frattini in Proud Attitude, 273 ; the Armenian Monastery, 273— the,, 
Brotherhod, 274 ; Interior of St. Mark, 275 ; Churches of Gli Scalzi, San 
Giorgio Maggiore, and San Maria della Salute, 276— their Works of Art, 



348 Index. 

276 ; Church of San Giovanni e Paolo, 276 — its Monuments of Famous 
Men, 277 ; Academy of Fine Arts, 277 ; the Arsenal, 278 — a Model of the 
Rucentaur, 278 ; Visit Several Palaces on the Grand Canal, 279 ; the 
Pigeons of St. Mark, 28c ; the Piazza at Night, 281 ; the Ducal Palace, 
281 — its Senate Chamber, 281 — Great Council Hall, 282 — Chamber of the 
Council of Ten, 282 ; Arrival of the German Emperor and Empress, 283 ; 
an Imposing Pageant, 284. 

Vevay, 185 ; Church of St. Martin, 185 ; Chateau of Hauteville, 185 ; Castle 
of Blonay, 185. 

Vienna, 232 ; Description of the City, 233 ; the Imperial Hofburg, 234 ; 
the Jewels in the Imperial Treasury, 235 ; Chateau of Belvidere, 236 ; 
Temple of Theseus, 236 ; the Prater, 237 ; Stock Exchange, 237 ; Impe- 
rial Stables, 237 ; a Performance of " Un Ballo in Maschera" at the Im- 
perial Opera House, 237. 

Warwick, 93 ; Hospital of Robert Dudley, 93 ; the " Twelve Poor Brothers," 

93 ; the Castle and its Treasures, 94 ; Church of St. Mary, 95. 
Wiirzburg, 218 ; the Royal Palace, 219 ; Walther von der Vogelweide, 219. 

York, 78 — its History, 79 ; Yorkshire Philosophical Society's Museum, of 
Antiquities, 80 ; The Cathedral, 80 — a Pompous Verger, 81 — the Chapter- 
House. 82 — the Choir, 83 : its Stained-Glass Windows, 84 ; the Curfew- 
bell, 85. 

Zurich, 160 ; a Trip up the Lake, 161 ; View from the Top of the Uetliberg, 
161. 



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